American String Quartet Denver September 27, 2017
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PETER WINOGRAD, VIOLIN LAURIE CARNEY, VIOLIN DANIEL AVSHALOMOV, VIOLA WOLFRAM KOESSEL, CELLO AMERICAN STRING QUARTET DENVER SEPTEMBER 27, 2017 WITH TOM SLEIGH AND PHIL KLAY “LYRIC IN THE TIME OF WAR” The following pieces will be interwoven with readings by Mr. Sleigh and Mr. Klay Performed without intermission JOHANN Praeludium No. 12 in F minor, BWV 857, from the SEBASTIAN BACH Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1 (1685-1750) DMITRI Quartet No. 8 in C minor, Op. 110 SHOSTAKOVICH Largo (1906-1975) Allegro molto Allegretto Largo Largo BÉLA BARTÓK Marcia from String Quartet No. 6 (1881-1945) SAMUEL BARBER Adagio from String Quartet in B minor, Op. 11 (1910-1981) LUDWIG VAN Quartet No. 11 in F minor, Op. 95, “Serioso” BEETHOVEN Allegro con brio (1770-1827) Allegretto ma non troppo Allegro assai vivace ma serioso – Più Allegro Larghetto espressivo - Allegretto agitato - Allegro PETER WINOGRAD AMERICAN STRING QUARTET violin Internationally recognized as one of the world’s finest quar- LAURIE CARNEY tets, the American String Quartet has spent decades honing violin the luxurious sound for which it is famous. The quartet, which celebrates its 45th anniversary in 2019, has performed DANIEL in all fifty states and has appeared in the most important AVSHALOMOV concert halls worldwide. The group’s presentations of the viola complete quartets of Beethoven, Schubert, Schoenberg, WOLFRAM KOESSEL Bartók, and Mozart have won widespread critical acclaim, and their MusicMasters Mozart: The Complete String Quar- cello tets, performed on a matched quartet set of instruments by Stradivarius, are considered to have set the standard for this repertoire. The quartet’s 2017-18 season features a major project together with the National Book Award-winning author Phil Klay and the poet Tom Sleigh in a groundbreaking program combining music and readings that examine the effects of war on people's hearts and minds. In 2016-17, the quartet collaborated with the renowned author Salman Rushdie to premiere a new work for narrator and quartet by the film composer Paul Cantelon built around Rushdie’s novel The Enchantress of Florence. These wildly imaginative projects cement the American String Quartet’s reputation as one of the most adventurous and fearless string quartets performing today. The quartet’s diverse activities have also included numer- ous international radio and television broadcasts, including a recent recording for the BBC; tours of Asia; and perfor- mances with the New York City Ballet, the Montreal Symphony, and the Philadelphia Orchestra. Recent high- lights include performances of an all-sextet program with Roberto and Andrès Díaz, many tours of South America, and performances of the complete Beethoven cycle of string quartets at the Cervantes Festival in Mexico and the Tel Aviv Museum in Israel. The American’s extensive discography can be heard on the Albany, CRI, MusicMasters, Musical Heritage Society, Nonesuch, and RCA labels. Most recently the group re- leased Schubert’s Echo, which pairs Schubert’s monumental last quartet with works bearing its influence by Second Viennese masters Alban Berg and Anton Webern. This repertoire posits that the creative line from the First to the Second Viennese Schools is continuous – and evident when these works are heard in the context of each other. As champions of new music, the American has given numerous premieres, including George Tsontakis’s 2015 Quartet No. 7.5, Maverick, Richard Danielpour’s Quar- tet No. 4, and Curt Cacioppo’s a distant voice calling. The premiere of Robert Sirota’s American Pilgrimage took place in September 2016. Formed when its original members were students at The Juilliard School, the American String Quartet’s career be- gan with the group winning both the Coleman Competi- tion and the Naumburg Award in the same year. Resident quartet at the Aspen Music Festival since 1974 and at the Manhattan School of Music in New York since 1984, the American has also served as resident quartet at the Taos School of Music, the Peabody Conservatory, and the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. The American String Quartet is represented by MKI Artists. PHIL KLAY Phil Klay is a graduate of Dartmouth College and a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps. He served in Iraq’s Anbar Province from January 2007 to February 2008 as a Public Affairs Officer. After being discharged he received an MFA from Hunter College of The City University of friendsofchambermusic.com 1 New York. Klay’s New York Times bestselling short story collection, Redeployment, won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2014. Redeployment also received the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation’s James Webb award for fiction dealing with U.S. Marines or Marine Corps life, the National Book Critics’ Circle John Leonard Award for best debut work in any genre, the American Library Association’s W. Y. Boyd Literary Award for Excellence in Military Fiction, the Chautauqua Prize, the Warwick Prize for Writing, and was short listed for the Frank O’Connor Prize. He was also named a National Book Foundation PHIL KLAY “5 Under 35” honoree. Klay’s writing has appeared Author in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, and the Brookings Institution’s Brookings Essay series. TOM SLEIGH Tom Sleigh is the author of ten books of poetry, including Army Cats, winner of the John Updike Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and Space Walk, which won the $100,000 Kingsley Tufts Award. In addition, Far Side of the Earth won an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters Widely anthologized, his poems and prose appear in The New Yorker, Virginia Quarterly Review, Poetry, American TOM SLEIGH Poetry Review, Yale Review, Threepenny, The Village , and other literary magazines, as well as Poet Voice The Best of the Best American Poetry, The Best American Poetry, Best American Travel Writing, and The Pushcart Anthology. He has received the Shelley Prize from the Poetry Society of America, a Fellowship from the American Academy in Berlin, a Fellowship at the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, an Individual Writer’s Award from the Lila Wallace/Reader’s Digest Fund, a Guggenheim grant, and two National Endowment for the Arts grants, among many others. He is a Distinguished Professor in the MFA Program at Hunter College and lives in Brooklyn. During the last eight years, he has also worked as a journalist in Syria, Lebanon, Somalia, Kenya, Iraq, and Libya. 2 friendsofchambermusic.com A special thanks to the Western States Arts Federation (WESTAF), Colorado Creative Industries, and the National Endowment for the Arts for their support of “Lyric in the Time of War,” including two additional outreach activities. Last night the quartet, along with poet Tom Sleigh, presented a free preview concert and discussion at Syntax Physic Opera at 554 South Broadway. This afternoon the quartet performed for ailing and injured veterans at the VA Hospital Chapel, in partnership with Denver’s Department of Veterans Affairs. Music is an integral part of therapy for veterans, reducing stress and anxiety while helping to inspire and heal those who have suffered trauma. NOTES Program Notes © Elizabeth Bergman IN BRIEF BACH: BORN: March 31, 1685, Eisenach, Germany PRAELUDIUM NO. DIED: July 28, 1750, Leipzig, Germany 12 IN F MINOR, FIRST PERFORMED: 1720 BWV 857, FROM MOST RECENT FRIENDS OF CHAMBER MUSIC THE WELL-TEMPERED PERFORMANCE: Tonight marks the first performance of this work, as a quartet, on our series. CLAVIER, BOOK 1 ESTIMATED DURATION: 3 minutes In 1720 Johann Sebastian Bach began writing out a series of preludes and fugues—in pairs, one for each major and minor key—as training exercises for his eldest son. Bach’s pedagogical purpose was announced on the title page, which explained that the twenty-four pieces in the Well- Tempered Clavier were meant “for the use and profit of young musicians desirous of learning as well as for the pastime of those already skilled in this study.” The preludes and fugues not only tested the talents of aspiring keyboard players, but also showcased the capabilities of the newest generation of keyboards themselves, which no longer needed to be re- tuned every time the key changed. The art of tuning (also known as “temperament”) had sufficiently advanced so that a musician could play through the entire set uninterrupted. friendsofchambermusic.com 3 Program Notes Ever since, the pieces have completely exceeded their Continued proscriptive purposes as either a didactic exercise for young musicians or a test of the tuner’s art. Bach’s preludes and fugues have been endlessly arranged and rearranged for all manner of performers and all kinds of instruments—from the jazz vocalists in the Swingle Singers, to the keyboard electronica (no tuning necessary!) of Wendy Carlos’s Switched on Bach, to the elegantly arranged version of Prelude No. 12 performed here by the American String Quartet. Although the fugue, by definition, involves the interplay of multiple musical lines in counterpoint, Bach’s preludes— this one in F minor included—also feature a subtle dialogue among multiple voices handled between the pianist’s two hands or, as here, the four instruments. The delicately balanced arpeggiations, rising then falling, gradually but efficiently turn up the tension in this short prelude to reach a moment of uneasy yet satisfying repose. SHOSTAKOVICH: IN BRIEF QUARTET NO. 8 IN BORN: September 25, 1906, Saint Petersburg, Russia C MINOR, OP. 110 DIED: August 9, 1975, Moscow, Russia FIRST PERFORMED: The quartet was premiered in 1960 in Leningrad by the Beethoven Quartet. MOST RECENT FRIENDS OF CHAMBER MUSIC PERFORMANCE: January 12, 2011, Pacifica Quartet ESTIMATED DURATION: 22 minutes Dmitri Shostakovich, the preeminent Soviet composer, is best known for his opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, his Fifth and Seventh Symphonies, and his fifteen string quartets, composed between 1938 and 1974.