Horszowski Trio, December 3, 2019

oneppo chamber music series David Shifrin, artistic director

Horszowski Trio Jesse Mills, violin Raman Ramakrishnan, cello Rieko Aizawa, piano

Tuesday, December 3, 2019 | 7:30 pm Morse Recital Hall in Sprague Memorial Hall

Robert Blocker, Dean

Program Antonín Dvořák 1841–1904

Piano Trio No. 4 in E minor, Op. 90,“Dumky” I. Lento maestoso – Allegro quasi doppio movimento II. Poco Adagio – Vivace non troppo III. Andante – Vivace non troppo IV. Andante moderato – Allegretto scherzando V. Allegro – Meno mosso VI. Lento maestoso – Vivace

Elliott Carter 1908–2012

Epigrams for piano, violin, and cello (2012)

intermission

Dmitri Shostakovich 1906–1975

Piano Trio No. 2 in E minor, Op. 67 I. Andante – Moderato – Poco più mosso II. Allegro con brio III. Largo IV. Allegretto – Adagio

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 Horszowski Trio Jesse Mills, violin Raman Ramakrishnan, cello Rieko Aizawa, piano Giving performances that are “lithe, persuasive” (The New York Times), “eloquent and enthralling” (The Boston Globe), and described as “the most compelling American group to come on the scene” (The New Yorker), the Horszowski Trio has quickly become a vital force in the international chamber music world. Since their debut performance in New York City in 2011, they have toured extensively throughout North America, Europe, the Far East, and India, traversing the extensive oeuvre of traditional piano trio repertoire and introducing audiences to new music that they have commissioned and premiered.

In March 2019, the Horszowski Trio made its London debut in a sold-out concert presented by Wigmore Hall. In the same season, they also appeared at the 92nd Street Y in New York City; the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia; Schubert Club in Saint Paul, Minnesota; Spivey Hall in Atlanta; Bowdoin Music Festival in Maine; UCLA in Los Angeles; Dresden’s Moritzburg Festival (Germany); and venues in Boston, San Francisco, Canada, and Japan, among others.

In addition, they released a recording of the complete piano trios by Robert Schumann on AVIE Records, receiving tremendous acclaim: “great care and affection” (BBC Radio); “intoxicating” (Gramophone); “exciting and deeply felt” (Strings); “fresh, supple and fantastic” (The Strad).

The Trio takes its inspiration from the musicianship, integrity, and humanity of the pre-eminent pianist Mieczysław Horszowski (1892–1993); the ensemble’s pianist, Rieko Aizawa, was Horszowski’s last pupil at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia. In New York City, Ms. Aizawa met violinist Jesse Mills and cellist Raman Ramakrishnan, who had a decades-long musical partnership going back to their days at Juilliard and Marlboro, and the three immediately felt the spark of a unique connection.

Described as “power players” by the Los Angeles Times, the Horszowski Trio’s repertoire includes works by many of the composers with whom Mr. Horszowski had personal interaction, including Gabriel Fauré, Enrique Granados, Bohuslav Martinů, Maurice Ravel, Camille Saint-Saëns and Heitor Villa-Lobos. The Horszowski Trio’s debut recording – an album of works by Gabriel Fauré, Camille Saint-Saëns, and Vincent d’Indy on the Bridge label – was released in 2014 and dedicated to the memory of Mieczysław Horszowski. Gramophone praised the “exemplary performance” of the “highly accomplished group,” concluding, “I long to hear more of the Horszowski Trio.”

The ensemble has performed the complete cycles of piano trios by Ludwig van Beethoven, Robert Schumann, and Johannes Brahms. They also actively cultivate hidden treasures from the repertoire, works by Arno Babajanyan, Leonard Bernstein, Vincent d’Indy, Arthur Foote, Germaine Tailleferre, and Morton Feldman. The Horszowski Trio is a passionate advocate for the music of our time. They have worked with the

Artist Profiles, cont.

Program Notes

by Rachel Glodo

legendary composers John Harbison, Charles Wuorinen, and Joan Tower, for whom the Trio recorded For Daniel in celebration of her 75th birthday. Recent premieres include works by Daron Hagen, Eric Moe, and (through a grant from Chamber Music America) Andreia PintoCorreia. Forthcoming premieres include works by Scott Lindroth, Louis Karchin, and Charles Wuorinen. The Trio’s violinist Jesse Mills, a two-time Grammy nominee who is also a composer and arranger, wrote Painted Shadow for the ensemble; the work was commissioned by and premiered at Bargemusic in Brooklyn, New York in January 2015.

The Horszowski Trio enjoys opportunities to expand its chamber music horizons through collaborations, and has worked with such musicians as Aaron Boyd (from the Escher Quartet), Kikuei Ikeda (Tokyo Quartet), Masumi Per Rostad (Pacifica Quartet), Phillip Ying (Ying Quartet), and Roberto Diaz.

The Horszowski Trio is based in New York City. It is the Ensemble-in-Residence at the Longy School of Music of Bard College in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and of the Leschetizky Association in New York City. » horszowskitrio.com

Piano Trio No. 4 in E minor, “Dumky” dvoŘ ák This trio’s “Dumky” title refers to the plural form of “dumka,” a sung lament of Ukrainian or Polish origin, usually in minor mode and duple time. In the late nineteenth century, the term was adopted by a number of Slavic composers to denote a solo or chamber work of a melancholy character, and the dumka became a marker of pan-Slavic identity. A number of composers — including Balakirev, Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, and Janáček — composed dumky, but it was Czech composer Antonín Dvořák (1841–1904) who emerged as the most prominent voice in the tradition. He titled eleven of his works “dumky,” and dumky-like elements abound in his oeuvre.

For his final piano trio (Op. 90, composed in 1890–91), Dvořák abandoned more typical trio forms in favor of a series of six dumky. While its tone is ruminative in nature, Dvořák’s manipulation of dancelike tunes, sparkling melodic lines, and dramatic contrasts prevents the trio from indulging in the overly elegiac. This is a lament that frolics and pines, dances and grieves, sings and sighs interchangeably.

With great perception, Dvořák reminds us that the human heart is not restricted to a single mood, nor lament to a specific sonic language.

Epigrams carter

Piano Trio No. 2 in E minor shostakovich

Old age was no match for Elliott Carter (1908–2012). In his final decade, the acclaimed American composer continued a remarkable output, including a number of orchestral pieces. But his final composition, the piano trio Epigrams, was a far more intimate affair.

In February 1944, Ivan Sollertinsky — Soviet critic, musicologist, polymath, and artistic director of the Leningrad Philharmonic — died unexpectedly in Novosibirsk after evacuation from Leningrad. He was only 41, and his friend Dmitri Shostakovich was devastated: “I cannot express in words,” he wrote to Sollertinsky’s widow, “all of the grief I felt when I received the news of the death of Ivan Ivanovich… who was my closest friend.”

The work is a collection of twelve brief movements, each about a minute long and characterized by a series of clever twists and abrupt changes of tempo, timbre, articulation, and dynamic.

In ancient Greece, epigrams emerged as poetic inscriptions on statues and monuments, eventually evolving into an established poetic form, which often led to a “point” or punchline. Today, we use the term to describe a pithy, memorable, sometimes satirical saying (for example: Mother Teresa’s “‘Live simply so others may simply live,” or poet Ogden Nash’s “Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker.”).

Like their literary cousins, Carter’s epigrams are brief but rife with meaning, each tightly designed to hold audience attention until the “punchline.” The result is a kind of intimate humor, reminiscent of a sly smile or subtly raised eyebrows.

Epigrams was premiered posthumously in 2013. It remains a remarkably intimate encounter with the wit and intelligence of a giant in American music.

Meanwhile, as the Soviet Union pushed Nazi forces further and further west, the incredible scope of Nazi atrocities began to be revealed. Although not strangers to violent and oppressive regimes, Soviet citizens were horrified by the images of death camps and the brutality experienced

by Holocaust victims.

From this year of global horror and personal grief emerged Shostakovich’s second piano trio, dedicated to Sollertinsky but which can be experienced as a requiem for the all the fallen and oppressed of the war years.

The trio juxtaposes grief-stricken melodies with painful sections of dance macabre, and it contains some of the first overtly klezmer-inspired music in Shostakovich’s oeuvre, perhaps a gesture to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust. The result is a musical expression of pain on a personal and global scale.

About the

Oneppo Chamber Music

Oneppo Chamber Music Series

2019–2020 Season jan 28

Brentano String Quartet A performance of Bruce Adolphe’s Coiled and the work on which it’s based, Beethoven’s “Serioso” Quartet, along with music by Bach, Mendelssohn, and Shostakovich.

feb 18

Zukerman Trio Violinist Pinchas Zukerman, cellist Amanda Forsyth, and pianist Angela Cheng perform Beethoven’s “Kakadu” Variations; Arensky’s Piano Trio No. 1 in D minor; and Brahms’ Piano Trio No. 2 in C major.

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.

mar 31

Pamela Frank and Emanuel Ax Two of the most admired instrumentalists on the international chamber music scene perform Mozart’s Sonatas in G major, K. 379, and B-flat major, K. 454, and Beethoven’s Sonata No. 10, Op. 96.

may 5

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

Free Student Tickets For the Oneppo Chamber Music Series, Horowitz Piano Series, and Ellington Jazz Series, free student rush tickets will be offered at the box office for students with a valid ID. When available, tickets will be distributed starting thirty minutes before each concert. One ticket per ID, subject to availability.

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Upcoming Events Boris Slutsky Horowitz Piano Series An all-Schumann program featuring the Arabeske, Kreisleriana, and the Symphonic Etudes (including posthumously published variations).

7:30 pm | Morse Recital Hall

Tickets start at $15, students $7 dec 11

Catherine Russell Ellington Jazz Series “One of jazz’s most celebrated vocalists, an incandescent performer who can make a century-old blues song as fresh and bracing as tomorrow’s bad news.” — San Francisco Chronicle 7:30 pm | Morse Recital Hall

Tickets start at $22, students $10 dec 17

Melvin Chen Horowitz Piano Series A performance of Janaček’s In the Mists, faculty composer Hannah Lash’s Six Etudes and a Dream, and Shostakovich’s infrequently performed Piano Sonata No. 2 in B minor.

7:30 pm | Morse Recital Hall

Tickets start at $15, students $7 jan 22

Peter Oundjian, principal conductor Yale Philharmonia The 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth is celebrated with a performance of the composer’s Choral Fantasy, with the Yale Glee Club and faculty pianist Boris Berman; the Triple Concerto, with violinist and YSM alumna Sunmi Chang, faculty cellist Paul Watkins, and faculty pianist Melvin Chen; and the revolutionary Third Symphony, “Eroica.”

7:30 pm | Woolsey Hall Tickets start at $12, Yale faculty/ staff $8, students free $3 surcharge at the door jan 24

Hung-Kuan Chen Horowitz Piano Series Faculty pianist Hung-Kuan Chen pays tribute to Beethoven with a performance of the composer’s last six sonatas. *7 pm | Morse Recital Hall

Tickets start at $15, students $7 feb 12

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