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Home > Hancher > Musicians from Marlboro

Playbill - Musicians from Marlboro (Clapp Recital Hall, Wednesday, November 10, 2004 - 8 p.m.)

Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. About the Artists
  3. Tonight's Program

Introduction

This performance supported by Richard and Judith Hurtig.

Program

Quartet in E-flat Major, K. 493 - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Duo No. 2 - Leon Kirchner

Commissioned by Richard and Judith Hurtig and Viola and Richard Morse in memory of Felix Galimir.

Intermission

Quintet in F Minor - César Franck

Thanks

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About the Artists

Maurycy Banaszek

Maurycy Banaszek (viola) began his studies at the age of six in Warsaw, Poland. He is a graduate of the Manhattan School of Music in New York where he studied with Michael Tree and won the Orchestral Performance Concerto Competition, received the Harold Bauer Award and was featured as a soloist with the Manhattan Chamber Sinfonia. He has appeared in recital and as soloist with both European and American orchestras and has received numerous violin, viola and chamber music awards including the 1995 Young Concert Artists European Auditions in Leipzig and the 1998 Coleman Competition in Los Angeles.

As a founding member of the Elsner String Quartet, Banaszek has played in Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall and Gewandhaus, among others. In August 1998 he was invited by the members of the Amadeus String Quartet to perform at the Amadeus Quartet 50th Anniversary Gala Concert in London. He regularly appears as a guest violist with the Szymanowski String Quartet and has also performed with the Camerata, Coolidge and American string quartets, as well as members of the New York Philharmonic. Chosen by Gidon Kremer, he performed with the Guarneri String Quartet at the Chamber Music Connects the World Festival in Kronberg, Germany. He has participated in many other international music festivals, including Aldeburgh Festival, Warsaw Autumn Festival and the Marlboro Festival, where he played with Mitsuko Uchida, Richard Goode, Kim Kashkashian and members of the Juilliard and the Guarneri string quartets.

He has made numerous recordings and broadcasts for TV/radio stations in Europe and the U.S. including regular live appearances on WQXR in New York. Other musical activities also include contemporary music as a member of the Claremont Ensemble and conducting. Banaszek was recently invited to be the soloist with the New Jersey Lyric Orchestra at their Carnegie Hall debut performance and with the Metamorphosen Chamber Orchestra in Jordan Hall, Boston.

Jeremy Denk

Jeremy Denk (piano) has established a formidable career as a recitalist and concerto soloist nationwide. A 1998 recipient of the Avery Fisher Career Grant and winner of the 1997 Young Concert Artists Auditions, he made his New York recital debut at Alice Tully Hall in April 1997. Since then, he has given recitals in Washington, D.C., Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago and Cleveland, and has made numerous orchestral and festival appearances. Denk is committed to a wide spectrum of repertoire and has participated in many premieres. Recent projects have included all-Bach and all-Schubert recitals, major solo works of Janácek, a recording of Tobias Picker's piano concerto Keys to the City (Chandos), a tour of Beethoven and Mozart wind quintets with New York-based Windscape, a 20th-century focus concert in Philadelphia featuring works of Leon Kirchner juxtaposed against those of Ligeti and Carter, and the world premiere of Kirchner's Duo for Violin and Piano.

Denk's career is marked by a commitment to chamber music, as evidenced by his receipt of the Andrew Wolf Chamber Music Award. He has collaborated with the Borromeo, Brentano, Colorado and Shanghai Quartets and has appeared at the Marlboro Festival, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Seattle Chamber Music Festival, Spoleto Festival and the Bridgehampton Festival, among others. Denk received a B.A. in chemistry and a B.M. in music from Oberlin, a Master's in Music from Indiana University, and a Doctorate from the Juilliard School.

Colin Jacobsen

Colin Jacobsen (violin), a 2003 Avery Fisher Career Grant recipient, began his studies at age four with Doris Rothenberg and Louise Behrend and eventually enrolled at the Juilliard School Pre-College Division, where he won the concerto competition. He also received the Grand Prize at the New York State and National American String Teachers Association Competitions. Jacobsen studied with Josef Gingold for two summers and graduated in 1999 from Juilliard where he studied with Robert Mann. At age 14, he played to critical acclaim with Kurt Masur and the New York Philharmonic; since then, he has performed as soloist with the Austin, Charlotte, Charleston and Eugene Symphony Orchestras, the Metamorphosen Chamber Orchestra and the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra.

An avid chamber musician, Jacobsen is a member of Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society's program for young artists, Chamber Music Two, and has also participated in the Second International Jerusalem Chamber Music Encounters led by Isaac Stern and the Ravinia Festival's Steans Institute for Young Artists. In addition to the Marlboro Music Festival, he has performed at the Banff, Bravo! Colorado, Caramoor and Salzburg festivals and in Taiwan's National Concert Hall.

As a touring member of Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Ensemble, Jacobsen has collaborated with musicians representing musical traditions from the Middle East and Asia. Over the past few years, he has been a resident performer on WQXR Radio's weekly On A-I-R (Artists-in-Radio) Series.

Yumi Kendall

Yumi Kendall (cello) has been studying since age five, made her recital debut at age seven and in 1998 made her orchestral solo debut with the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. She graduated from the Curtis Institute of Music where she studied with David Soyer and was the recipient of a full-tuition scholarship and the Jacqueline du Pré Memorial Fellowship. Kendall has performed on numerous occasions in the Washington, D.C. area, including performances at the German and Dutch embassies, Mexican Cultural Center and as a soloist in a program with the National Symphony cellists in a tribute concert to Mstislav Rostropovich. She has also performed in concerts at Southern Illinois University in Steamboat Springs, Colorado; the "Prodigy Concert" at the Strings in the Mountains Music Festival; the annual Suzuki Summer Festival in Matsumoto, Japan; and at a benefit concert in Kuroiso, Japan.

Recipient of several awards and honors, Kendall won first place in the Friday Morning Music Club Competition, first place in the National Symphony Orchestra Young Soloists' Competition and the judges' commendation award at the Johansen International Competition. She has participated in several orchestras, including the Haddonfield Symphony as principal cello; the American Youth Philharmonic, where she was principal cello from 1996 through 1999; the National Orchestra Institute, where she was principal cello; and the Summer Music Institute at the Kennedy Center. Other summer festivals and institutes in which she has participated include the Verbier Festival, Taos School of Music and the Marlboro Festival. Kendall is currently assistant principal cello of the Philadelphia Orchestra and a member of the Dryden String Quartet.

Ida Levin

Ida Levin (violin) has established an international reputation as soloist, recitalist and chamber musician. She began her violin studies at age three in her native Santa Monica and at age ten made her professional debut with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. The recipient of both the Leventritt Award and an Avery Fisher Career Grant, Ms. Levin was invited by Rudolf Serkin to appear with him in a joint recital for President and Mrs. Reagan, broadcast by PBS as "In Performance at the White House." She has performed at Carnegie Hall as soloist with the American Symphony Orchestra and the New York String Orchestra and with the orchestras of St. Louis, Utah, Toulouse, Kammerphilharmonie Berlin, the Prague Symphony and the Edinburgh Chamber Orchestra, among others. As a recitalist, she has appeared at the 92nd Street Y, the Kennedy Center, London's Wigmore Hall and throughout the U.S., Italy, France, the Netherlands, Mexico and numerous other countries.

Levin is a senior artist at the Marlboro Festival, takes part annually in Open Chamber Music in Cornwall, England and is a regular guest at festivals from Seattle, Santa Fe and Montréal to Cremona, Italy, West Cork, Ireland, and Mondsee, Austria. She is a member of the Boston Chamber Music Society, the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society Players and a frequent guest with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and Houston Da Camera. Recently, Levin gave the world premiere of Leon Kirchner's Duo for Violin and Piano with Jeremy Denk and recorded the work for Marlboro Recording Society. Additionally, she has recorded for Philips, EMI, Dynamic, Music Masters, Nonesuch and BCMS and her solo CD for Stereophile was released in 1998. She has given master classes worldwide and has been on the faculties of Harvard University, the European Mozart Academy and the Sandor Vegh Academy in Prague.

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Tonight's Program

Piano Quartet in E-flat Major, K. 493 (1786)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)

Mozart moved to Vienna in 1782 when he broke away from his father's control and married Constanze Weber. This started him on the path of independence in his art as well as his personal life. However, the loss of patronage that he previously had in Salzburg meant he had to write music that would "sell" while at the same time allow him express his individual ideas. As his popularity with the Viennese public grew, he was challenged by what he could do to extend the complexity of his music to attract the professional musician or "gifted" amateurs but not discourage the public from attending the performances of such music.

In mid-1785, flush with the success of his so-called "Viennese" piano concertos, Mozart turned to the instrumental form of the piano quartet, a combination of piano with strings that at the time was unusual. The most common form was to be found in the piano trios, which were essentially little more than violin sonatas with the cello supporting the keyboard. A quartet for piano and strings was a novel idea. It should be noted that a fourteen-year-old Beethoven, early in 1785, had already composed but not published three piano quartets. While it is unlikely that Mozart was aware of this fact, had he known it could well have inspired him to do his own experimentation with this combination of instruments.

In any event, according to the early biographer of Mozart, George Nissen (second husband of Constanze Mozart), the composer was commissioned to write a set of three piano quartets in 1785 for the publisher Franz Anton Hoffmeister. The first of these, the G-minor Piano Quartet (K. 478) that Mozart probably completed in June but did not submit until October 1785, was deemed too complex and difficult for the amateur buyers to suit the publisher. Thus Hoffmeister "made Mozart a present of the advance payment he had already received, on the condition that he should not write the other two quartets contracted for."

Mozart already had the experience of having his recent works judged "too difficult" and was not easily dismayed. He worked on a second piano quartet while Le Nozze de Figaro was being performed in May 1786, and completed the work, the Piano Quartet in E flat, K. 493, on June 3, 1786. It was published by the firm of Artaria the following year. Both piano quartets, despite the initial reaction of being "difficult," became widely accepted in France, England and Germany. On November 30, 1791, shortly before Mozart's death, a critic writing for a music journal noted that the E-flat Quartet was "written with that fire of the imagination and that correctness which has won for Herr M. the reputation of one of the best composers in Germany."

The Piano Quartet in E flat Major, K. 493, with its prominent piano voice, has all the flair and grandeur of the composer's piano concertos of the same period while retaining the intimacy of a chamber piece. Much of this can be ascribed to the permeating effect of the piano in the quartet. After all, the piano was Mozart's "personal" instrument and its role in the work demands technical ability beyond what a "gifted amateur" can handle and do justice to the quartet.

The Allegro movement opens with a dramatic statement by the piano that works into a number of lyrical themes initiated by the piano, echoed and engaged in dialogues by the strings that bring to mind Mozart's piano concertos. There are rapid scales on the piano matched by the arpeggios in the strings. The Larghetto, considered one of Mozart's "most subtly beautiful slow movements," displays a depth of feeling despite its lightness and delicacy. There are repetitions of the thematic material that are echoed with slight twists to its climax. The finale, Allegretto, has a gavotte-like theme that takes one through an excursion of merry but graceful dances.

The piano bursts forth with a virtuosic display before the initial theme comes back and the work ends with a brief coda.

Duo No. 2 (2001)

Leon Kirchner (b. 1919)

Leon Kirchner grew up in Los Angeles, and studied with Arnold Schoenberg, Roger Sessions and Ernest Bloch. A gifted pianist and conductor, Kirchner is first and foremost a composer. He has taught for many years at Harvard and is a member of the American Academies of Arts and Letters and Arts and Sciences. He has been honored twice by the New York Music Critics' Circle (First and Second String Quartets), and received the Naumburg Award (Piano Concerto No. 1), the Pulitzer Prize (Third Quartet with electronic tape), the Friedheim Award (Music for Cello and Orchestra) and commissions from, among others, the Ford, Fromm and Koussevitzky Foundations, the New York Philharmonic, The Philadelphia Orchestra, St. Paul Chamber Symphony, Spoleto and Santa Fe Chamber Music Festivals, the Boston Symphony, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge. He was composer-in-residence and a performer at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, the Tanglewood Music Center, Tokyo Music Today (Takemitsu Festival) and the Spoleto, Charleston, Aldeburgh and Marlboro Music festivals. Among Kirchner's most recent works are: the Trio No. 2 (for the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio); Of Things Exactly As They Are (a work for orchestra, chorus, and soloists), premiered by the Boston Symphony in November 1996; and a violin concerto. The Duo No. 2 on tonight's program is Kirchner's most recent work which received its première in the summer of 2002 with violinist Ida Levin and pianist Jeremy Denk.

A note from the composer

About four years ago, I received a charming letter from Pamela Frank asking whether I would accept a commission from relatives of Felix Galimir to write a violin/piano work in memory of her beloved mentor, the distinguished musician who was such a loved and respected figure at the Marlboro Music Festival. He had for years brought so many young and talented performers into the 20th century, introducing them to the Second Viennese School, a period which he endlessly admired and of which he was a part of as a young musician in Austria. He also shared with them his valuable insights into the works of previous centuries.

I had known Felix for years at Marlboro where we were both protagonists as well as performers. He presented several of my chamber works as a player in groups he had carefully chosen. At one point, Felix had asked if I would write a sonata for him, which never came about but, there in his violin case, a scrap of paper was found with a few measures of a piece I had started to write for him. So, it seemed completely natural to now write a piece in tribute to Felix Galimir. I did not know what a "Felix Galimir" work would be but I was honored by the request from Pamela and his relatives.

Duo No. 2 was premiered at Marlboro in the summer of 2002 with Jeremy Denk, piano and Ida Levin, violin, who are performing the work on this Musicians from Marlboro tour.

- Leon Kirchner

Quintet in F Minor (1878-1879)

César Franck (1882-1890)

César Franck's father planned for his son to become a virtuoso pianist. Thus he was enrolled into the Royal Conservatory in Liège at the age of eight. At age 12 he was taken by his father on a piano-playing tour of Belgium. In 1835 the family moved to Paris, and there the young Franck became a private pupil of the Bohemian music-theorist and composer Anton Reicha (1770-1836) who had taught Liszt, Berlioz and Gounod. Although Franck's time with Reicha was short, the training he received about counterpoint and fugal technique became his mainstay for the rest of his life.

He was admitted to the Paris Conservatory in 1837. He left the Conservatory in 1842 to attempt to please his father and develop a career as a virtuoso pianist to help support the family. The father arranged concerts for him toward this end. Franck met little success as a pianist, but he did impress Liszt, whom he had met in Brussels, with some piano trios that he had composed.

In 1848 Franck had a falling out with his father and broke away from the family when he married a pupil, Félicité Desmousseaux. He moved to Paris where he accepted a number of organ and teaching posts. Beginning in 1885 his appointment as organist at Ste. Clotilde together with part-time teaching became his main source of support. His improvisatory skill attracted notice and led to his first major work, the remarkable Six pièces (1862). Another decade passed before he was appointed organ professor at the Conservatoire. From the mid-1870s until his death his creative powers lasted unabated. Despite the recognition of their distinctive contribution to French music, his compositions (large scale secular and sacred works, symphonic poems, music for organ, piano and chamber pieces) brought him only small financial success.

In 1872 he took on the organ class at the Paris Conservatoire, where he attracted several pupils who later distinguished themselves, becoming known as the "bande à Franck." In 1886 he was elected president of the Société Nationale de Musique, an organization promoting new French works. There followed an unpleasant confrontation between Franck and his followers on the one hand, and the chief founder of the society, the conservative, disillusioned Camille Saint-Saëns, on the other.

Franck played an important role in the development of French music and musical life in the last three decades of the 19th century. This was a period when France had suffered a sense of national disgrace following defeat in the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71). There arose a strong sentiment against all Germanic arts and to promote ARS GALLICA as the ideal of a specifically French art in contrast to the Germanic Romanticism. Yet at the same time there was a growing enthusiasm for the music of Wagner. The conflict in ideas led to the formation of the Société Nationale de Musique by Camille Saint-Saëns and his supporters. Franck sought to breach the gap between the two forces in his compositions and his teaching by combining classical formal discipline with romantic emotional musical language.

The Quintet in F minor, composed in 1878-79, is considered one of Franck's most powerful and passionate pieces. Charles Tournemire, composer/organist who was a pupil of d'Indy, described the F-minor quintet as "the king of quintets" that served as a "broad triptych in which the philosophy of Franck is displayed." Here he was probably referring to Franck's attempt to bridge the gap as described above. The "conventional Gallic virtues: deftness, lightness of texture, epigrammaticism, objectivity, elegance, wit" (Richard Taruskin) can hardly be applied to the Franck quintet. In this work Franck focused upon formal design, the use of a recurring theme (called "cyclic form" by his disciples), symphonic-like expansiveness and drama, all befitting the Germanic more than the Gallic paradigm.

In light of the conflict of ideals that was taking place among French composers it is worth noting that not only did Franck dedicate the quintet to Saint-Saëns but the latter was the pianist for the work's première on January 17, 1880. A rumor circulated in Paris at the time, apparently supported by d'Indy, that Saint-Saëns refused the proffered gift of the manuscript. That he was unsympathetic to the quintet and remained so was well known. The public, on the other hand, acclaimed the new quintet for its vitality and novelty.

The first movement of the F-minor quintet, marked Molto moderato quasi lento; Allegro, opens with a dramatic statement by the strings, followed with a sweet, gentle melody from the piano. They combine and form the main theme that will recur in various manifestations cyclically in each of the quintet's movements. An extended animated section allows the theme to be developed and recapitulated, and as the tempo increases the movement builds to a blazing climax.

The central movement, Lento, con molto sentimento, is rather dream-like in nature. It was called by Tournemire, "a white region in which man seems to hear the angel of consolation." It is full of melodic phrases that are exchanged among the instruments as the cyclic theme, is explored and developed.

The finale, Allegro non troppo, ma con fuoco, opens very softly. As it becomes more and more energetic, two motifs from earlier movements are bought to bear and developed. These are finally combined with the main cyclic theme effectively unifying all to bring the work to its brilliant conclusion.

Professor emeritus Arthur Canter is a retired clinical psychologist on the faculty of the UI Department of Psychiatry. An amateur music historian, he has been a long-time contributor of program notes for Hancher concerts and participant in the musical life of Iowa City.

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