Omer String Quartet, October 28 & 31, 2019

yale in new york David Shifrin, artistic director

Omer Quartet Mason Yu, violin • Erica Tursi, violin Jinsun Hong, viola • Alex Cox, cello

with

Melvin Chen

Monday, October 28, 2019 | 7:30 pm Sudler Hall in William L. Harkness Hall Thursday, October 31, 2019 | 7:30 pm Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall

Robert Blocker, Dean

Program Caroline Shaw b. 1982

Blueprint (2016)

Ludwig van Beethoven 1770–1827

String Quartet No. 8 in E minor, Op. 59, No. 2 I. Allegro II. Molto adagio III. Allegretto – Maggiore, Thème russe IV. Finale. Presto

intermission

Robert Schumann 1810–1856

Piano Quintet in E-flat major, Op. 44 I. Allegro brillante II. In modo d’una marcia. Un poco largamente III. Scherzo. Molto vivace IV. Allegro ma non troppo Melvin Chen, piano

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 Omer Quartet

Melvin Chen, piano

The Omer Quartet, the Yale School of Music’s fellowship quartet-in-residence, first came to prominence upon winning the Grand Prize and the Gold Medal at the 2013 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition. Since then, the group has won First Prize at the 2017 Young Concert Artists International Auditions, top prize at Italy’s 2017 Borciani International Competition, collaborated with distinguished performers, ensembles, and composers, and created original community engagement programs, among other distinctions. The ensemble’s passion for serving communities led them to curate a Music For Food series in Maryland from 2017-2019 to bring together listeners and donations in support of local food pantries. Formed at the Cleveland Institute of Music, the quartet includes violinists Mason Yu and Erica Tursi, violist Jinsun Hong, and cellist Alex Cox.

Pianist Melvin Chen has performed at such major U.S. venues as Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, Merkin Concert Hall, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and Boston’s Jordan Hall, in addition to appearances in Canada and Asia. His performances have been featured on radio and television stations around the globe.

Solo recordings include Beethoven’s “Diabelli” Variations on the Bridge label and a recording of Joan Tower’s piano music on the Naxos label.

During its two-year appointment at Yale, the quartet will be mentored by the School’s ensemble-in-residence, the Brentano String Quartet, and will coach undergraduate chamber music ensembles at Yale College’s Department of Music. While at Yale, the quartet will perform for audiences in New Haven and beyond. The Omer Quartet comes to Yale having served as the doctoral fellowship quartet-in-residence at the University of Maryland. The group has also held a graduate residency at the New England Conservatory, and has served as chamber-ensemble-in-residence at the Bravo! Vail Music Festival and the Ernst Stiefel Quartet-in-Residence at Caramoor. » omerquartet.com

An enthusiastic chamber musician, Chen has collaborated with such artists as Ida Kavafian, David Shifrin, Pamela Frank, and Peter Wiley, and with the Shanghai, Tokyo, Miami, Penderecki, and Miró string quartets. Chen has appeared at numerous festivals, including the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival, Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, Bard Music Festival, and Music from Angel Fire, among others.

Chen has a doctorate in chemistry from Harvard University and a double master’s degree from The Juilliard School in piano and violin. He received a bachelor of science degree in chemistry and physics from Yale University. At Yale, he also studied piano with Boris Berman and violin with Paul Kantor and Ida Kavafian. Chen is the Director of the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival and is Professor in the Practice of Piano and Deputy Dean at the Yale School of Music.

Program Notes

by Bel Ben Mamoun Blueprint shaw

String Quartet No. 8 beethoven

In the words of the composer herself, Blueprint is intended to be performed in the context of Beethoven. Drawing from the finale of Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 6 in B-flat major, Caroline Shaw both emulates and deconstructs Beethoven’s sixth string quartet to construct her blueprint: a vibrant colourful collection of musical motifs and timbres. Commissioned by the Wolf Trap Foundation for the Aizuri Quartet in 2016, Blueprint also provides a subtle nod to the ensemble’s name: Aizuri being a form of Japanese woodblock printing using indigo dyes.

Shaw opens her piece with fragments: bites of rhythmic and melodic motifs punctuated by instant silences. A taste, followed by another, and yet another. A pair of fragments, this time elongated into a stately reiteration of the two-note motif, quickly overcome by silence. A last pair of fragments: finally the string quartet is propelled forward by a repeated eighth note motif shared across the ensemble.

Heralding the start of Beethoven’s Middle Period string quartets, String Quartet No. 8 is the second in a trio of commissions by Count Andreas Razumovsky, the Russian ambassador in Vienna. Beethoven’s eighth string quartet in particular is as contemplative as it is rich: four movements of (ranging) timbre and repeated tonal tension as the quartet flirts between E-sonorities throughout movements, both E minor and E major.

A bold, passionate pair of chords interrupts the silence to open the first movement.

Here, Beethoven constructs a heroic and colourful E-minor allegro, theatrical as it is tense, at times tiptoeing with nervous energy only to switch frantically back into its bravado.

The audience is given a calm breath in the arrival of the E major adagio: a lone violin is soon doubled and supported by the rich timbres of the lower violin and cello registers, hymn-like in the expressive and almost devotional additive opening. Flowing triplets sent like paper boats in a gentle river current downstream from the violin to the cello in an undercurrent of perpetual motion despite the static, flowing upper lines.

Blueprint is a canvas of vibrant musical timbres. Colours bloom in the conversations between instruments, in the interjections of bright pizzicato and tight bowed staccato.

As the moods and timbres shift, perpetual motion in the second violin guides the quartet forward with quiet energy below high flowing lines in the first violin and cello, occasionally punctuated by snap pizz.

Shaw demands utmost cohesion from Blueprint’s first musical fragment into its final scalar flourish.

The third movement honours (or perhaps pokes fun at) Razumosvky’s Russian heritage in its use of the Russian tune “Glory to the Sun.” The third movement flows between minor and major, but retains the quartet’s overall rooting in E tonality.

The final movement is a continuation of “Glory to the Sun,” introducing its buoyant final theme in an exclamatory, stately downbeat, propelled forward by its heavily dotted melodic segments into a final, stately finish.

Piano Quintet in E-flat major schumann Known for his fragile emotionality, Schumann’s Piano Quintet in E-flat major was both composed for and dedicated to his wife, Clara, in a burst of compositional energy in the first six weeks after her return from an extended concert tour. In turn, Schumann spotlights his wife through the quintet’s prominent piano part, at times accompanied by the entire string quintet.

Interestingly, Op. 44 is the first piano quintet of its kind: pairing piano with string quartet rather than replace the second violin with bass.

Schumann’s quintet bursts to life in a fiery homophonic introduction: an exuberant start to an energetic allegro movement.

Two contrasting themes carry through the allegro: the first, a glitteringly dramatic main theme of upward intervals, soon replaced by a second theme, song-like and passionate, carried through the romantic exchanges of the cello and piano. Schumann continues the trend of dual themes in his C minor funeral march: a halting theme punctuated by the interjections of the piano and strings and a lyrical lament shared by the cello and first violin. At times, the rich, dark timbre of the viola in its lowest register bleeds through the texture to support the cello from above.

The heaviness of the funeral march is soon forgotten in an exuberantly energetic third movement, fiery scalar patterns, arpeggiations, and fleeting melodic fragments electrified by piano interjections and octaves. Rushing triplets spin forward the first trio’s bubbling current of notes before the second trio’s flurry of continuous sixteenth note scales. Schumann ends his piano quintet in a show of masterful composition, combining the themes of his first and final movements to create a tight balance of light buoyancy with proud interjections from the violins. In a marvellously contrapuntal double-fugue, Schumann pulls together all the nervous, restless energy of the strings’ arpeggiations to frame the stately piano octaves below them, firmly reestablishing E-flat major to end the coda.

Yale School of Music Established in 1894, the Yale School of Music continues a position of international leadership in the training of performers, composers, and teachers. A professional graduate school and the only school of music in the Ivy League, the Yale School of Music maintains a highly selective admissions process, admitting approximately 200 students who come from the finest American and international conservatories and universities to study with a distinguished faculty. The School has one of the highest international profiles at Yale, engaging globally in cooperative partnerships with leading conservatories, schools, orchestras, and opera companies.

Alumni of the Yale School of Music hold major positions throughout the music world. In addition to performing with and conducting preeminent American and international orchestras, many graduates have founded or joined prominent chamber music ensembles. Voice alumni earn renown in professional opera companies, with over a dozen Yale graduates on the artist roster of the Metropolitan Opera. Yale composition alumni enjoy noted success with continual premieres of new music.

Along with artistic accomplishment, Yale School of Music graduates provide strong leadership in guiding the course of numerous academic and cultural institutions.

The Yale School of Music awards the doctor of musical arts, master of musical arts, and master of music degrees, as well as the artist diploma and the certificate in performance. Âť music.yale.edu

yale school of music staff Robert Blocker, Dean Melvin Chen, Deputy Dean Michael Yaffe, Associate Dean Krista Johnson, Manager of Concert Programs Kate Gonzales, Concert Office Coordinator Winona van Alstyne, Assistant Concert Office Coordinator Matthew LeFevre, Recording Engineer Katie Kelley, Director of Communications Jenny Reed, Designer Manager David Brensilver, Communications Officer Travis Wurges, Video Producer Tara Deming, Operations Manager Chris Melillo, Operations Associate Manager Patty Torello, Business Manager Charles Stupekevich, Financial Analyst JaQuay Black, Financial Assistant

Upcoming Events Yale in New York Brentano String Quartet jan 27 Preview Concert

7:30 p.m. | Morse Recital Hall

free jan 29

Yale in New York 7:30 pm | Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall | Tickets $25 » carnegiehall.org

The Brentano String Quartet is joined by faculty violist Ettore Causa and pianist and YSM alumnus David Fung for a performance of Hindemith’s Viola Sonata in F major, Op. 11, No. 4, and Violin Sonata in E-flat major, Op. 11, No. 1, and Mozart’s String Quintet No. 2 in C minor.

Yale Alumni from Ensemble Connect apr 1

Preview Concert 7:30 p.m. | Morse Recital Hal free

apr 2

Yale in New York 7:30 pm | Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall | Tickets $25 » carnegiehall.org

A concert featuring School of Music alumni from Ensemble Connect (formerly Ensemble ACJW), Carnegie Hall’s elite fellowship program.

Upcoming Events Yale School of Music nov 1-2 Fall Opera Scenes

Yale Opera Fully staged performances of excerpts from a variety of scenes from comic and tragic operas.

With piano accompaniment.

7:30 p.m. | Morse Recital Hall

Tickets start at $12, students $5

nov 8

Boris Berman, piano Horowitz Piano Series Faculty pianist and series Artistic Director Boris Berman performs music by Schubert and Chopin.

7:30 p.m. | Morse Recital Hall

Tickets start at $15, students $7

nov 12 Polonsky-Shifrin-Wiley Trio

Oneppo Chamber Music Series Trios by Beethoven, Poulenc, Brahms, and Nino Rota.

7:30 pm | Morse Recital Hall

Tickets start at $28, students $13

nov 6

Aaron Kernis and David Lang, faculty composers New Music New Haven Kernis’ Legacy, Lang’s String of pearls, and works by graduate student composers.

7:30 p.m. | Morse Recital Hall free nov 7

Bernarda Fink, mezzo-soprano Faculty Artist Series “A master of the disarming, deceptive simplicity of the song recital.”

– The New York Times 7:30 p.m. | Morse Recital Hall

Tickets start at $12, students $5

nov 21 Peter Oundjian,

principal conductor

Yale Philharmonia Nighttime is celebrated in a program featuring Debussy’s Nocturnes with the treble voices of the Yale Schola Cantorum, Weber’s Bassoon Concerto, and Scheherazade.

7:30 pm | Woolsey Hall Tickets start at $12, Yale faculty/ staff $8, students free* $3 surcharge at the door

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