Brentano String Quartet with Jonathan Biss, Oct 9, 2018

oneppo chamber music series David Shifrin, artistic director

Brentano String Quartet Mark Steinberg, violin • Serena Canin, violin Misha Amory, viola • Nina Lee, cello with

Jonathan Biss, piano

Tuesday, October 9, 2018 | 7:30 pm Morse Recital Hall in Sprague Memorial Hall

Robert Blocker, Dean

Program Antonín Dvořák 1841–1904 arr. Misha Amory

Two Slavonic Dances Op. 46, No. 1 in C major Op. 72, No. 2 in E minor

Leoš Janáček 1854–1928

Selections from Po zarostlém chodnícku (On an overgrown path) I. Our Evenings II. Words Fail!

III. Good Night!

Dvořák

Miniatures for two violins and viola, Op. 75a I. Cavatina, moderato II. Capriccio, poco allegro III. Romance, allegro IV. Elegie, larghetto

Bedrich Smetana 1824–1884

Z domoviny (From my Homeland) for violin and piano, JB1:118 I. Moderato II. Andantino – Allegro vivo

Furiant. Presto Dumka. Allegretto grazioso

intermission

Dvořák

Piano Quintet No. 2 in A major, Op. 81 I. Allegro, ma non tanto II. Dumka. Andante con moto III. Scherzo (Furiant). Andante con moto IV. Finale. Allegro

As a courtesy to others, please silence all devices. Photography and recording of any kind is strictly prohibited. Please do not leave the hall during musical selections. Thank you.

Artist Profiles Brentano String Quartet

Jonathan Biss, piano

Since its inception in 1992, the Brentano String Quartet has appeared throughout the world to popular and critical acclaim.

Within a few years of its formation, the quartet garnered the inaugural Cleveland Quartet Award and the Naumburg Chamber Music Award. In recent seasons the quartet has appeared in the United States, Canada, Europe, Japan, and Australia.

Jonathan Biss is a world-renowned pianist who shares his deep musical curiosity with classical music lovers. In addition to performing a full schedule of concerts, he has spent eleven summers at the Marlboro Music Festival and written extensively about his relationships with the composers with whom he shares a stage. A faculty member at the Curtis Institute of Music since 2010, Biss led the first massive open online course offered by a classical music conservatory, Exploring Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas, which has reached more than 150,000 people in 185 countries.

The Brentano String Quartet has performed many musical works that pre-date the string quartet as a medium, among them the madrigals of Gesualdo, fantasias of Purcell, and secular vocal works of Josquin.

The quartet has also worked closely with some of the most important composers of our time, including Elliott Carter, Charles Wuorinen, Chou Wen-chung, Steven Mackey, Bruce Adolphe, and György Kurtág, and has commissioned works from Wuorinen, Adolphe, Mackey, David Horne, and Gabriela Frank. The quartet has been privileged to collaborate with such artists as Jessye Norman, Joyce DiDonato, Richard Goode, Jonathan Biss, and Mitsuko Uchida.

In fall 2014, the quartet became the quartet-in-residence at the Yale School of Music, succeeding the Tokyo String Quartet in that position.

Biss, with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, co-commissioned five composers to write new piano concertos, each inspired by one of Beethoven’s. He has embarked on a nine-year, nine-disc recording cycle of Beethoven’s complete piano sonatas, and he continues his complete Beethoven piano sonata performance cycles at the Aspen and Ravinia festivals. Beethoven’s Shadow, his best-selling eBook about the process of recording the sonatas, was the first Kindle Single written by a classical musician. Both the recording cycle and the final Coursera lectures on the sonatas will be complete in 2020.

Biss represents the third generation in a family of professional musicians that includes his grandmother, cellist Raya Garbousova, and his parents, violinist Miriam Fried and violist/violinist Paul Biss. He studied at Indiana University with Evelyne Brancart and at the Curtis Institute of Music with Leon Fleisher.

Program Notes Introduction Mark Steinberg Dvořák was born in a small Bohemian town and grew up playing the violin for local dances at his father’s inn. Even as he attained his artistic maturity he continued to write dances evoking his native soil, as well as music steeped in the rhythms of speech. He also returned again and again to inspiration from legends and folklore of his homeland, reveling in the intimate spirit of storytelling. Such qualities abound in the beloved Piano Quintet, Op. 81, and enliven it with resplendent color. This program features that work and prefaces it with a set of shorter works as musical epigraphs. Inside the grand palace of the quintet, these epigraphs steer us toward discovery of the ballroom for dancing as well as the clandestine nooks perfect for the telling of fairy tales.

We have Dvořák, himself, in two of his Slavonic Dances, conjuring his homeland through remembered rhythms of the body.

We also include his Miniatures, the composer’s own version of his Four Romantic Pieces for violin and piano, here set as an intimate narrative for two violins and viola.

There are, as well, Dvořák’s musical heir, Janácek, and his artistic father, Smetana.

Selections from Janácek’s On an Overgrown Path for solo piano are his own miniatures, steeped in Moravian folk poetry and nostalgia for his youth. And the first half is rounded off by Smetana’s Z domoviny (“From my Homeland”), for violin and piano, redolent of Bohemian pride, singing and dancing with infectious warmth and joy.

On an Overgrown Path janáČek Katherine Balch Janáček began his piano cycle On an Overgrown Path in 1900. By its completion in 1911, it comprised fifteen intimate and affectual pieces. The title references Moravian folk poetry, evoking a sound or tradition from the past that has since been overlooked or neglected. The first five songs of the cycle were intended to be Moravian folksong arrangements for harmonium (an instrument often available in Moravian school houses) but became character pieces for piano that Janáček simply called “moods.”

The composer wrote: “The little pieces contain distant reminiscences. Those reminiscences are so dear to me that I do not think they will ever vanish... Whenever I have a moment to indulge myself undisturbed in these recollections, then I find another such little piece comes to mind.”

Miniatures for 2 violins and viola, Op. 75a Dvoř ák Wei-Yi Yang Right after the New Year in 1887, Antonín Dvořák composed an unusual Terzetto for his violinist friend Jan Pelikan and a student, with a viola part for himself. The second violin part soon proved too difficult for the student, and Dvořák quickly refashioned the piece for violin and piano. Renamed the Four Romantic Pieces, Op. 75, the suite occupies a unique niche between a set of dances and a full sonata. It is a pity that the composer withdrew the individual titles — Cavatina, Capriccio, Romanza, and Elegia — which were so descriptive of the movements’ characters.

Z domoviny (From my Homeland) Smetana Patrick Campbell Jankowski Following the completion of his massive cycle of tone poems Ma vlast, Smetana seemingly had something else to express about his homeland. This time, it was in the form of an intimate duo for violin and piano. By this time, Smetana was entirely deaf. It is touching to imagine his inner sound world: those melodies he could hear in his mind, crafted from the material stored there after a life of listening to the music of his people. This immense library of folk idioms influenced Aus Der Heimat, though the themes are entirely original.

Nationalism, after all, means not just preserving and uplifting the music of a nation, but continuing its legacy by joining in that lineage. The two pieces are wildly different: an inward-looking song without words marked by moments of wandering is followed by a dramatic and extroverted showpiece infused with Czech folk character.

Smetana’s little composition offers performers a chance to explore multiple aspects of their own personality, and in this sense, feels imminently familiar and human.

Piano Quintet No. 2 in A major, Op. 81 Dvoř ák Patrick Campbell Jankowski Among the most remarkable characteristics of the quintet, especially in the opening movement, is its diversity of thematic manipulations. Moods shift suddenly and frequently, giving the music a mercurial quality, as the singing cello theme from the opening is continuously interrupted

by a raucous dance in the folk style. The two inner movements are a pair of Czech dances, and total opposites in affect. In the tender “dumka,” Dvořák explores the timbral juxtaposition of bright bell-like sonorities in the piano against rich low strings. A dramatic ritornello theme is punctuated by starkly contrasting episodes.

The “furiant” is as effervescent as the “dumka” was heavy. In the finale, Dvořák once again employs contrast and juxtaposition to great effect, yet while the first movement yielded dramatic intensity, here he cultivates humor and play. In those moments wherein things seem to get serious, the composer reverts quickly and capriciously to a lighter character.

The four movements of Op. 81 form a varied yet balanced whole.

Oneppo Chamber Music

2018–2019 Season sep 27

The Soldier’s Tale A fully-staged production The New York Times has described as “fresh, funny and aptly ominous”

oct 9

Brentano String Quartet Works by Dvořák, Janáček, and Smetana, with pianist Jonathan Biss

nov 13

Escher String Quartet Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 14 in C-sharp minor, Op. 131, and music by Mozart and Korngold

dec 4

Emerson String Quartet String quartets by Haydn, Bartók, and Dvořák

jan 29

Brentano String Quartet Lamentations: a celebration of the art of cathartic expression from Gesualdo to Carter

feb 26

Jordi Savall Music from the film Tous les Matins du Monde, featuring works by Couperin, Lully, and more

apr 16

A Far Cry Gravity: a progression of works for strings by Pärt, Xenakis, Kernis, Bartók, and Golijov

May 7

Competition Winners Performances by the winners of the School’s annual Chamber Music Competition

About the Oneppo Chamber Music Series Chamber music is an integral part of the Yale School of Music, and this concert series presents many of the world’s leading concert artists on the stage of Morse Recital Hall.

Ever since Sprague Memorial Hall was built in 1917, it has been home to chamber music performances. The origins of this series can be traced to concerts organized

by Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, widely considered the godmother of chamber music in America.

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Upcoming Events oct 24 Boris Berman, piano

Horowitz Piano Series

Faculty pianist Boris Berman performs Haydn’s “London” Sonatas and late sonatas by Prokofiev.

7:30 p.m. | Morse Recital Hall Tickets start at $15, students $7 Oct 26 Jean-Marie Zeitouni, guest conductor Yale Philharmonia

Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique and works by Saint-Saëns and Debussy.

7:30 p.m. | Woolsey Hall Tickets start at $12, Yale faculty/ staff $8, students $5 $3 surcharge at the door nov 7 Wei-Yi Yang, piano

Horowitz Piano Series

Faculty pianist Wei-Yi Yang performs an all-Schumann program that includes Kinderszenen, Kreisleriana, and the Fantasie.

7:30 p.m. | Morse Recital Hall Tickets start at $15, students $7

nov 13 Escher String Quartet

Oneppo Chamber Music Series The Escher String Quartet performs music by Mozart, Korngold, and Beethoven.

7:30 p.m. | Morse Recital Hall

Tickets start at $28, students $13 nov 15 Peter Oundjian, principal conductor

Yale Philharmonia Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 1, with Sophiko Simsive, and Strauss’ Also sprach Zarathustra.

7:30 p.m. | Woolsey Hall Tickets start at $12, Yale faculty/ staff $8, students $5 $3 surcharge at the door nov 28 Melvin Chen, piano

Horowitz Piano Series

Faculty pianist Melvin Chen performs an arrangement of Brahms’ Symphony No. 3, and works by Sibelius and Ravel.

7:30 p.m. | Morse Recital Hall Tickets start at $15, students $7

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