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Arizona Friends of Chamber Music Evening Series All concerts at 8:00 p.m. at Leo Rich Theater |
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Arizona Friends of Chamber Music Evening Series All concerts at 8:00 p.m. at Leo Rich Theater |
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Czech Nonet Wednesday, October 13, 2010 |
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When it came
together in the 1920's, the Czech Nonet had exactly one work in its repertory,
a little-known composition by Spohr. The group immediately set about expanding
its library, and Iša Krejčí's Divertimento, from 1937,
was one of the earliest commissions and one of the group’s first
great successes. One of the ensemble’s most recent commissions is
the Mixed Nonet of University of Arizona-based Daniel Asia; the work is
often introspective, sometimes a bit jazzy. More familiar fare completes
the concert. Mozart's quintet is one of the earliest works that artfully
combines horn with a few strings; the Debussy arrangement brings abundant
color to what was originally a piano suite; and Wagner's uncharacteristically
tender Siegfried Idyll was an anniversary surprise for the composer’s
wife.
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The Czech Nonet is one of the oldest and most original chamber ensembles in the world. It was founded in 1924 by a group of students of the Prague Conservatory according to instrumental requirements of Louis Spohr's Nonet (violin, viola, violoncello, contrabass and the wind quintet). The Czech Nonet was quickly recognized as both an important interpreter of classic repertoire and an ardent champion of new music, inspiring the composition of more than 300 works by some of the greatest living composers, including Prokofiev, Lutoslawski, Martinu, etc. The Czech Nonet's specific combination of instruments naturally invites the ensemble to include works from the Baroque to later 20th century works, which makes the repertoire of the Czech Nonet exceptionally deep, rich and varied. The Czech Nonet has performed at many prominent international music festivals, such as: Salzburger Festspiele, Edinburgh, Montreux, Schleswig-Holstein, La Folle journée de Nantes, Festival de Música de Canarias, Prague Spring and others. The Czech Nonet has made numerous concert tours round Europe (Germany, Austria, United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, and France), North and South Americas, Japan, Africa and has performed at many world-famous music platforms, such as: Musikverein Vienna, Montreaux Auditorium Stravinski, the Munich Herkulessaal, the Auditorio de Zaragoza, the Lyon Auditorium, the Washington Library of Congress, the Vancouver Playhouse, the Dvorak hall at the Prague Rudolphinum etc. The Czech Nonet’s
rich discography has been recorded by the Supraphon, Panton and Harmonia
Mundi recording companies on forty-five LP’s and CD’s. |
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Calder
String Quartet Wednesday, November 3, 2010 |
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You’ll
have to wait until the very end of Haydn’s quartet to find out what
the joke is, but there are plenty of little flights of fancy all the way
through the work. Thomas Adès, whom English critics have anointed
as the successor to Benjamin Britten, has had his own trickster moments,
but his 20-minute Piano Quintet is a more mature, serious work, with classical
harmony blurred at the edges. The piano solo Still Sorrowing, on the other
hand, is a youthful piece, which he wrote at age 20. A concert that begins
with a joke ends with the opposite: Beethoven’s so-called “Serioso”
Quartet, laced with anger and violence.
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Video of
the Calder Quartet Calder Quartet from Calder Quartet on Vimeo. |
The Calder Quartet continues to expand its unique array of projects by performing traditional quartet repertoire as well as partnering with innovative modern composers, emerging musicians, and performers across genres. The group was awarded the 2009 ASCAP Adventurous Programming Award in recognition of its exciting programming and collaborations. As quartet-in-residence at the Colburn Conservatory in Los Angeles, the Calder performs twice yearly at Zipper Hall. Season highlights include upcoming performances at the Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, at New Haven's International Festival of Arts and Ideas, at Disney Hall as part of the Green Umbrella Series, and in concert with Grammy-winning pianist Gloria Cheng at the Orange County Performing Arts Center. The Calder Quartet has studied together at the University of Southern California's Thornton School of Music and the Colburn Conservatory of Music with Ronald Leonard, and at the Juilliard School, where it received the Artist Diploma in Chamber Music Studies as the Juilliard Graduate Resident String Quartet. They have also studied with Professor Eberhard Feltz at the Hochschule fur Musik Hanns Eisler in Berlin, and collaborated with such notable performers as Menahem Pressler and Joseph Kalichstein. They have enjoyed performances in venues and festivals across the country and have been featured in some of the nation's top publications and radio stations. Pianist Gloria Cheng, winner of the 2009 Grammy for Best Instrumental Soloist Performance (without Orchestra), is widely recognized as a colorful and communicative interpreter of contemporary music. She has garnered universal acclaim for her unassuming virtuosity and eloquence, and has premiered dozens of new compositions, including works composed for her by John Adams, Mark Applebaum, Pierre Boulez, Joan Huang, David Raksin, Terry Riley, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Stephen Andrew Taylor, Chinary Ung, and Andrew Waggoner. Cheng’s passionate dedication to contemporary music has brought about close collaborations with many of the leading composers of our time: Thomas Adès, Henry Brant, Earle Brown, Elliott Carter, George Crumb, John Harbison, György Ligeti, Witold Lutoslawski, Steve Reich, and Steven Stucky. |
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St. Lawrence String Quartet Wednesday, December 8, 2010 |
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Quartets by
three of the 20th century’s most distinctive composers constitute
the fare, leading off with the Fifth Quartet of Bohuslav Martinů,
a lyrical but also urgent and tragic work from the late 1930s, when the
composer realized the worsening political climate in his native Czechoslovakia
would prevent him from ever living there again. Benjamin Britten’s
Second Quartet, though written at the end of World War II, is not so much
a reflection of that conflict as a tribute to Henry Purcell on the 200th
anniversary of his death. In contrast, Maurice Ravel’s beloved, sole
quartet is a work of warmth and gentle sunshine in the Impressionistic
manner.
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St. Lawrence String Quartet website Audio is available on the group's website
“As listeners who've heard the Saint Lawrence String Quartet's earlier Saint Paul Sunday programs can attest, its four members enter into each work they play with utter passion and humanity—as though it were the only music on earth. Appropriately enough, this week they perform two movements of Maurice Ravel's sole foray into the form alongside music by the composer most often credited with inventing it: the "Joke" quartet of Franz Joseph Haydn. We'll also hear powerful music by a composer who has collaborated directly with the ensemble: Jonathan Berger's "Doubles" and his "Eli Eli," a deeply affecting tribute to slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.” |
The St. Lawrence String Quartet (SLSQ) has established itself among the world-class chamber ensembles of its generation. Its mission: bring every piece of music to the audience in vivid color, with pronounced communication and teamwork, and great respect to the composer. Since winning both the Banff International String Quartet Competition and Young Concert Artists International Auditions in 1992, the quartet has delighted audiences with its spontaneous, passionate, and dynamic performances. Alex Ross of The New Yorker magazine writes, "the St. Lawrence are remarkable not simply for the quality of their music making, exalted as it is, but for the joy they take in the act of connection." The SLSQ is celebrating its 20th anniversary with a new recording of Haydn and Dvorák quartets through a partnership with the innovative company ArtistShare.com. ArtistShare offers artists a ground-breaking way to embark on a recording project: the musicians maintain complete creative control, communicate directly with fans, and offer them a way to experience the project from its inception to fruition, as well as participate at the level they wish, from a free download to various membership tiers. In concert, the foursome regularly delivers traditional quartet repertoire, but is also fervently committed to performing and expanding the works of living composers. This season sees them performing new works by both John Adams and Osvaldo Golijov. Adams penned his “String Quartet” (co-commissioned by The Juilliard School, Stanford Lively Arts, and the Banff Centre) expressly for the St. Lawrence, who premiered the work at Juilliard in January 2009. Golijov's forthcoming new work (commissioned by Stanford Lively Arts) is expected to build on the success of their previous collaboration, which culminated in the twice-Grammy-nominated SLSQ recording of the composer's Yiddishbbuk (EMI) in 2002. The quartet also paid tribute to a lineup of Canadian composers with performances of five new string quartets around their native country. The St. Lawrence has active working relationships with numerous other composers, including R. Murray Schafer, Christos Hatzis, Jonathan Berger, Ka Nin Chan, Roberto Sierra, and Mark Applebaum. Early in their career, the SLSQ was privileged to study with the Emerson, Tokyo and Juilliard String Quartets, and have for many years been passionate educators themselves. Since 1998 they have held the position of Ensemble in Residence at Stanford University. This residency includes working with students of music as well as extensive collaborations with other faculty and departments using music to explore a myriad of topics. The foursome's passion for opening up musical arenas to players and listeners alike is evident in their annual summer chamber music seminar at Stanford and their many forays into the depths of musical meaning with preeminent music educator Robert Kapilow. |
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Ives String Quartet Wednesday, February 2, 2011 |
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The Mozart quartet
is something unusual: a tribute to a publisher, Mozart’s friend Franz
Anton Hoffmeister, who put out this work not long after the premiere of
Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro. Quincy Porter, a 20th-century American,
was a conservative whose nine quartets to some extent emulate the manner
of Mozart, but with updated, sophisticated harmonies; Porter’s Third
Quartet, like his others, is classically proportioned but lyrically intense.
Similarly, Felix Mendelssohn’s E-minor quartet manages to be urgent
and tuneful all at once, an example of Mendelssohn taking inspiration
from Mozart and Beethoven but going his own way.
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In addition, the Quartet devotes time to a wide range of educational projects, from performing for school-aged children to visiting Trinity College for annual residency activities. |
The Ives Quartet has captivated audiences from San Francisco to New York, Taiwan to London. Inspired by the passionate, artistic commitment and unique temperament of American composer Charles Ives (18741954), the Ives Quartet creates powerful live-music experiences through the presentation of fresh and informed interpretations of a carefully curated repertory to American and international audiences. It has established a reputation for passion, precision, and provocative programming, winning accolades for playing that shows both “super-refinement” and “visceral, rock-and-roll intensity.”
The Quartet presents a regular series of concerts throughout the year in San Francisco, San Jose, and on the Peninsula and appears in noted chamber music series and festivals nationwide. It has championed an unusual repertoire, attracting critical enthusiasm for its practice of “reveling in the unfamiliar” and bringing underappreciated gems of the string-quartet literature to a wide audience. The repertoire combines established masterworks with underappreciated gems, neglected scores of early 20th century America, and specially commissioned new pieces. In recent seasons the Ives Quartet has premiered commissioned scores by American composers Ben Johnston, William Bolcom, Donald Crockett, Henri Lazarof, Mark Volkert, Eric Sawyer, and Andrew Norman.
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Auryn String Quartet Wednesday, February 16, 2011 |
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György
Kurtág picks up where Anton Webern left off, producing a 12-minute
quartet in 15 terse, potent movements. Kurtág’s idea of dissonance
in 1989—and ours today—is a far cry from what was considered
dissonant in Mozart’s time; his K. 465 quartet, an otherwise radiant
work, made the audiences of 1785 uncomfortable with its slow, tense introduction,
full of unresolved harmonies over a throbbing cello line. Johannes Brahms
was so intimidated by such past masters as Mozart and Beethoven that he
sketched and destroyed some 20 quartets before producing one he felt worthy
of publication: his Op. 51 No. 1, a rich, romantic work that derives almost
all its material from the melodies in its very first movement.
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(Pronunciation : Au-, rhymes with wow!, -ryn rhymes with queen; the stress is on Au-) The Auryn Quartet has just observed its 28th birthday in the same formation.....almost 3 decades of music-making! The initial, and ultimately most profound influence on the Auryn Quartet´s evolution was the time spent in Cologne studying and playing with members of the Amadeus Quartet. Five years were spent in monthly exchanges with those great masters. A two-semester sabbatical at the University of Maryland, USA (in !987) with the Guarneri Quartet cemented the emerging Auryn style. Of course, the obligatory competitions (London, Munich ARD, Bratislava (EU)Broadcasting Competition) helped the Quartet gain recognition during the early ´80s, and being signed on for several seasons by Columbia Artists Management (USA) ensured the break-through onto the world´s stages. Since then, the Auryn Quartet has been ever-present on the international music scene . At this point it seems almost unnecessary to mention the countless festivals to which the Quartet has been invited ( Salzburg, Edinburgh, Lockenhaus, Gstaad, Mondsee, Beethoven-Fest Bonn, Les Arcs, Montepulciano etc.), and the numerous chamber-music partners the group has had over the decades ( Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Christine Schaefer, Peter Orth, Alexander Lonquich, Nobuko Imai, Tabea Zimmermann, Eduard Brunner, Michael Collins, Christian Poltéra, Christian Altenburger, David Soyer and Michael Tree, to name but a few !) but it is interesting nonetheless! About half the Auryns´ working time is spent travelling abroad, touring Great Britain (memorable concerts at the Wigmore Hall in London, and at the Edinburgh Festival), Italy, Austria, Switzerland and of course Canada and the USA . In Washington, D.C. the Quartet is artistic adviser to the Schubert Festival, an annual event held in Georgetown University´s historic Gaston Hall, and is a regular performer at the Frick Collection series in New York. |
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Ensō String Quartet Wednesday, April 13, 2011 |
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Haydn wrote
some of the first, most durable string quartets, and his Op. 20 No. 5
is one of them. Unusually for the time, it’s in a minor key, which
in this case makes the work sound serious, but not sad. Stravinsky’s
tiny early pieces for string quartet mocked the style of Haydn and brought
a snotty new aesthetic to the quartet form. Erwin Schulhoff’s pieces
are also a little mordant, but take a more affectionate approach to such
dance forms as the waltz, tango and tarantella. In contrast, Dvořák’s
14th and final string quartet is the epitome of mainstream Romanticism;
many connoisseurs consider it one of the most masterly quartets of its
time, even finer that the composer’s popular “American”
Quartet.
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Audio and video are available Listen to the quartet on “The Ensō String Quartet—an acclaimed young foursome whose members hail from England, New Zealand, Canada, and the United States—takes its name from the Japanese Zen circle, a symbol representing many contrasting ideas at once. This week on Saint Paul Sunday we'll discover why their chosen title suits them so well as they perform masterpieces of Haydn and Schumann with what one critic calls 'just the right quotient of sass.' ” |
Ensō Quartet plays "First
Train", an excerpt from Kurt Stallmann's SONA. |
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With a 2009
Grammy nomination for "Best Chamber Music Performance," the
Ensō String Quartet has quickly become one of the country's
most accomplished young ensembles. Shortly after the group's inception
at Yale University in 1999, Enso had success at the Banff International
String Quartet Competition and won the Concert Artists Guild International
Competition, and has consistently received high praise for performances
ever since. The quartet's debut recording was described by Strad Magazine
as "an auspicious start to their recording career," and was
followed by the recent Grammy-nominated release of the quartets of Ginastera.
MusicWeb International summed up this album as "playing of jaw-dropping
prowess revealing masterpieces of the 20th century quartet literature
… seek out this group - they are clearly bound for greatness."
The disc was selected as one of MusicWeb's Recordings of the Year for
2009.
In addition to
the success of their recordings, Ensō String Quartet's concerts have
been acclaimed by audiences and critics alike. The Houston Chronicle praised
the group for their "edge-of-the-seat vitality few groups maintain
throughout a performance." The group is equally at home in many styles,
and is committed to the classics of the string quartet repertoire as well
as being strong advocates for new music. In 2009, the quartet received
a Chamber Music America Commissioning Grant with composer Kurt Stallmann.
That same year, two recordings were released on the Albany label featuring
the quartet in world premiere recordings of music by Karim Al Zand and
Anthony Brandt. Previous seasons have seen the quartet give many other
premiere performances, including Joan Tower's Piano Quintet with the composer
at the piano. |
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Arizona Friends of Chamber MusicP.O.Box 40802, Tucson, AZ 85717 520-577-3769
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