An Afternoon in Vienna an Evening in Prague
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WEEK TWO AN AFTERNOON IN VIENNA Sunday Afternoon, August 12, 2018 at 3:00 Spa Little Theatre AN EVENING IN PRAGUE Tuesday Evening, August 14, 2018 at 8:00 Spa Little Theatre WWW.SPAC.ORG WWW.CHAMBERMUSICSOCIETY.ORG A MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT Dear Friends, Welcome to the Saratoga Performing Arts Center’s 2018 Season! As I begin my second summer in Saratoga, I am so grateful for the community’s enthusiastic embrace of our new initiatives, new partnerships and new collaborations. This season you can expect exhilarating performances from our beloved resident companies, the return of new “classics” like “Live at the Jazz Bar,” “SPAC on Stage” and “Caffe Lena @ SPAC,” and the Saratoga debuts of the National Ballet of Cuba and Trinity Irish Dance Company. SPAC and its home, the Spa State Park, represent a perfect confluence of manmade beauty and natural beauty and it is the inspiration of place that made us want to explore the interplay between the natural world and the world of art, the nexus between Art & Cosmos. This year, we launch the Out of this World festival, kicked off by a performance of Holst’s The Planets with spectacular NASA Space footage, followed by star-gazing around the reflecting pool. Audiences will engage with roaming astronomers, experience virtual reality space expeditions and even attend a special children’s chamber concert that examines the creative connection between Einstein and Mozart. And we introduce a new SPAC Speakers series with thought-provoking “stars” from the worlds of space, science and the arts. There are so many other new experiences and surprises in store. We welcome you to a new summer of discovery. Elizabeth Sobol PRESIDENT AND CEO CMS AT SPAC A MESSAGE FROM THE CHAIRMAN Dear Friends, On behalf of the Saratoga Performing Arts Center Board of Directors, thank you for your support and attendance at this performance. The strength and progress of SPAC has always depended on the contributions of its audiences and the many sponsors, donors and partners who recognize SPAC’s impact on the cultural and economic life of this region. Thanks to you, as we lift the curtain on our season, we do so in a strong position financially, artistically and as an institution. Last season, we welcomed Elizabeth Sobol to Saratoga Springs as SPAC’s new president and CEO. In less than two years, Elizabeth has implemented a new vision and path for the Center with innovative programming and an increased emphasis on affordability, accessibility and community outreach. SPAC’s reduced $30 amphitheater ticket and the expanded Fidelity Kids in Free program welcomed hundreds of new guests who had previously never been to the Center. Educational programming such as Classical Kids, Summer Nights at SPAC and the Performance Project have expanded exponentially, reaching more than 23,000 students in over 70 schools. These are just a few of the successes that we will continue to build upon. Looking ahead to the future, I’d also like to extend a special thanks to New York State for its capital investment of $1.75 million to rehabilitate and upgrade SPAC’s amphitheater ramps, lighting and other high priority infrastructure. The new project is slated to be completed in advance of the 2019 season and is part of the Board’s and SPAC President and CEO Elizabeth Sobol’s vision to strengthen our partnerships and make critical investments into our facilities for generations to come. As always, your presence and support is what makes this season possible. We invite you to join us often this summer to experience world-class artistry in our world-class venue. Ron Riggi CHAIRMAN CMS AT SPAC AN AFTERNOON IN VIENNA Sunday Afternoon, August 12, 2018 at 3:00 Spa Little Theatre GILBERT KALISH, piano DAVID FINCKEL, cello WU HAN, piano CLIVE GREENSMITH, cello ALEXANDER SITKOVETSKY, violin JOSEPH CONYERS, double bass ARNAUD SUSSMANN, violin RICARDO MORALES, clarinet YURA LEE, violin/viola DANIEL MATSUKAWA, bassoon JENNIFER MONTONE, horn JOSEPH HAYDN Trio in E-fat major for Piano, Violin, and (1732-1809) Cello, Hob. XV:29 (1797) Poco allegretto Andantino ed innocentemente— Finale (Allemande): Presto assai KALISH, SUSSMANN, FINCKEL FRANZ SCHUBERT Fantasie in F minor for Piano, Four (1797-1828) Hands, D. 940, Op. 103 (1828) KALISH, WU HAN FRITZ KREISLER Viennese Rhapsodic Fantasietta for (1875-1962) Violin and Piano (1941-42) LEE, KALISH —INTERMISSION— SCHUBERT Octet in F major for Winds and Strings, D. 803, Op. 166 (1824) Adagio—Allegro Adagio Scherzo: Allegro vivace Andante Menuetto: Allegretto Andante molto—Allegro SITKOVETSKY, SUSSMANN, LEE, GREENSMITH, CONYERS, MORALES, MATSUKAWA, MONTONE PLEASE TURN OFF CELL PHONES AND OTHER ELECTRONIC DEVICES. Photographing, sound recording, or videotaping this event is prohibited. NOTES ON THE PROGRAM Trio in E-fat major for Piano, Violin, and Cello, Hob. XV:29 JOSEPH HAYDN in all of Haydn’s trios, attests to Born March 31, 1732 in Rohrau, Bartolozzi’s skill and musicianship. Lower Austria. As was typical of the 18th-century Died May 31, 1809 in Vienna. genre, Haydn’s E-flat major Piano Composed in 1797. Trio entrusts the bulk of the musical Duration: 18 minutes argument to the keyboard, though the violin here enjoys a prominence The Piano Trio in E-flat major (XV:29 that points to the increasingly in Hoboken’s catalog; H.C. Robbins independent role it had assumed in Landon places it as No. 45, the last, chamber music by the turn of the in his chronological listing of the 19th century. Though the piece was trios) was composed soon after written principally for the growing Haydn left England for the second market of British and Continental time, in 1795. The piece was one of musical amateurs, it exhibits a three such works (Nos. 43-45; H. mastery of form and style and a XV:27-29) written for publication by breadth of expression reminiscent the firm of Longman & Broderip, and of the contemporaneous advertised for sale on April 20, 1797 symphonies that Haydn devised in the London Oracle. The set was for his London concerts. The trio’s dedicated to the talented pianist opening movement is an ingenious Therese Bartolozzi (née Jansen), hybrid of sonata and rondo a native of Aachen, Germany who procedures: the section based had settled in London to study on a gracious melody presented with Clementi. She became one at the outset returns twice (in of the city’s most sought-after the manner of a rondo), while the performers and piano teachers, two intervening episodes treat and both Clementi and Dussek the theme first in a minor-mode dedicated important sonatas to her. transformation and then through Haydn met her early in his second extended motivic development London sojourn, and became (as in sonata form). The disarming close enough to her to serve as melodic and expressive purity of a witness at her wedding on May the second movement’s opening 16, 1795 to Gaetano Bartolozzi, (“innocentemente” instructs the son of the well-known engraver score) is countered by the audacity Francesco Bartolozzi. The difficulty of its B major tonality, which shares of the piano part in these three not a single diatonic note with the compositions, the most challenging E-flat major home key of the trio. CMS AT SPAC SUNDAY, AUGUST 12, 2018 The music becomes more anxious the Finale, a sonata-form movement as it unfolds, drawing closer to the in the style of an old dance type trio’s home tonality by the end of the in fast triple meter called in the movement, but harmonic stability is score by its common French name, achieved again only with the start of Allemande (German Dance). Fantasie in F minor for Piano, Four Hands, D. 940, Op. 103 FRANZ SCHUBERT to Schott in February 1828 along Born January 31, 1797 in Vienna. with the Quartets in G major and Died November 19, 1828 in Vienna. D minor (“Death and the Maiden”), three operas, the Mass in A-flat, the Composed in 1828. Duration: 20 minutes E-flat Piano Trio, and several dozen songs. His proposal was refused, and the score for the Fantasie was On March 26, 1828 in the hall of not issued until Diabelli of Vienna the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde brought it out in 1829, a year after in Vienna, Schubert gave the only the composer’s death. On May 9, public concert entirely of his works 1828, Schubert and Franz Lachner held during his lifetime. The event, performed the piece for a friend, prompted and sponsored by his the writer and Schubertian Eduard circle of devoted friends, was a von Bauernfeld, who recorded significant artistic and financial in his diary, “Today Schubert success, and he used the proceeds (with Lachner) played this new, to celebrate the occasion at a wonderful four-hand fantasie to local tavern, pay off some old me.” The score was dedicated to debts, acquire a new piano, and Countess Caroline Esterházy, a buy tickets for Nicolò Paganini’s young student of his upon whom eagerly awaited debut in Vienna the bachelor Franz seems to three days later. The first important have had a crush—he once told composition Schubert completed her that everything he wrote was after that milestone in his career secretly dedicated to her, though was the Fantasie in F minor, the the Fantasie is the only one of his most poetic of his creations for compositions to bear her name. piano duet (i.e., four hands at Schubert was skilled as a violinist, one keyboard). The work was violist, and solo pianist, but his finished in April, but apparently favorite form of participatory had been sketched soon after chamber music was the piano duet.