Quartetto Di Cremona Cristiano Gualco, Violin | Paolo Andreoli, Violin Simone Gramaglia, Viola | Giovanni Scaglione, Cello
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PRESENTS Quartetto di Cremona Cristiano Gualco, violin | Paolo Andreoli, violin Simone Gramaglia, viola | Giovanni Scaglione, cello ChamberMusicConcerts.org · 541-552-6154 QUARTETTO DI CREMONA FRIDAY, MAY 21, 2021 – 7:30PM Recorded in Italy for Chamber Music Concerts Prokofiev (1891-1953) String Quartet no.1 in B Minor, Op. 50 Allegro Andante molto Andante Schubert (1797-1828) String Quartet in A Minor, D. 804, Op. 29 “Rosamunde” Allegro ma non troppo Andante Menuetto: Allegretto – Trio Allegro moderato gold sponsors: Kenneth Deveney, Dr. Arthur & Mechtild Howard, Tim & Teri O’Rourke, Alexis Packer – Attorney at Law, JoAnn Prujan, Louis Roemer & Karen Gernant, Vince & Patty Wixon silver sponsors: Patrick Alexander, Oregon Pacific Bank online producer/director: OurConcerts.Live North American Representation: Kirshbaum Associates Inc. 307 Seventh Avenue, Suite 506 New York, New York 10001 www.kirshbaumassociates.com Quartetto di Cremona’s recordings are available on Audite, Ayriel Classical, Klanglogo, and Decca. Quartetto di Cremona Cristiano Gualco, violin | Paolo Andreoli, violin Simone Gramaglia, viola | Giovanni Scaglione, cello inner of the 2019 Franco Buitoni Award, the Quartetto di Cremona is a preem- Winent quartet of its generation noted for its lustrous sound, refined musician- ship, and stylistic versatility. Celebrating its 20th anniversary in the 2020-21 season, the quartet was established in 2000 at the Accademia Walter Stauffer in Cremona, Italy. Since then Quartetto di Cremona has toured extensively in Europe, the United States, South America, and Asia, appeared at leading festivals, and performed regu- larly on radio and television broadcasts, including RAI, BBC, Westdeutscher Rund- funk, and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. The Quartetto di Cremona’s extensive repertoire encompasses key masterworks — Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert — and essential twentieth-century contemporary literature by Debussy, Schoenberg, Webern, Bartók, and Shostakovich along with contemporary works by Golijov, Lacheman, Fabio Vacchi, and Silvia Colasanti. Quartetto di Cremona began the 2020-2021 season with debuts at the Ravello Festival and at Prague’s Rudolfinum, alongside the Pavel Haas Quartet. Additional performances this season include the quartet’s debut in Istanbul with clarinetist David Orlowsky as well as numerous dates throughout Italy. In November, the group releases its 14th album, Italian Postcards, featuring works by Hugo Wolf, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, and the world-premiere recording of Nimrod Borenstein’s Cieli d’Italia, Op. 88 for string quartet, commissioned by the Cremona Quartet, as their debut for Avie Records. Quartetto di Cremona began its 2019-2020 season in Genoa — where all four mem- bers were born and currently reside — with a performance alongside pianist Anna Geniushene. They embarked on an ambitious tour of North America in Octo- ber which brought them to California, Idaho, New Jersey, New York, North Caro- lina, Texas, Toronto, and Washington, D.C. Highlights included a world premiere of Omaggio a Monteverdi by Byron Adams at Segerstrom Center for the Arts, a night of Klezmer music in Los Angeles’s Wallis Annenberg Center with clarinetist David Orlowsky, and two performances at Da Camera of Houston. Advancing their com- mitment to the Beethoven quartets, the ensemble began a three-year Beethoven cycle in L’Aquila, Italy along with complete cycle performances in Tirana, Albania, Kaohsiung, and Taipei, Taiwan. The quartet appeared in concert alongside the Emer- son String Quartet for the centennial celebration of the Associazione Scarlatti in Napoli. Additional highlights included a tour of the Netherlands, a recital with pia- nist Angela Hewitt in Leon, Spain, and numerous performances at leading Italian musical institutions throughout the season. In July 2018, the German label Audite issued Quartetto di Cremona’s complete cycle of the Beethoven quartets, recorded during the period 2013-2016 in a box set, which includes the String Quintet in C Major, Op. 29 with Lawrence Dutton, violist of the Emerson String Quartet. The first volume in the series received widespread and immediate recognition, including a five-star rating in BBC Music Magazine and selec- tion as album of the month by Fonoforum, the German journal. The seventh CD earned the Supersonic Award from the German magazine Pizzicato and the Echo Klassik 2017 prize. More recently, the Quartet was a winner of the International Classical Music Awards 2018 for the seventh and eighth discs of their Beethoven series. An all-Schubert disc was released in May 2019 on Audite featuring two of composer’s masterpieces, String Quartet “Death & the Maiden” and String Quintet in C Major, with cellist Eckart Runge. Quartetto di Cremona leads a renowned string program currently in its eighth year for professional and advanced string quartets at the Accademia Walter Stauffer, in addition to conducting masterclasses throughout Europe and tours of the United States. Awarded with the Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship in 2005, the Quartetto di Cremona is also the recipient of the second “Franco Buitoni Award” (2019), in rec- ognition of its contribution to promoting and encouraging chamber music in Italy and throughout the world. The quartet is supported by the Kulturfond Peter Eckes which provides the musicians with four superb instruments: violin Giovanni Battista Guadagnini (1767), violin Paolo Antonio Testore, viola Gioachino Torazzi, cello Dom Nicola Amati. In 2015, the musicians were awarded honorary citizenship by the city of Cremona. “It’s a rare blend: breadth of sound and capriciousness combined with perfect tuning and ensemble has the players sounding absolutely of one voice…Nothing less than life-affirming.” Gramophone “The Cremona Quartet completes its Beethoven series with a fine coupling, com- bining exemplary technique and intonational purity with an interpretive acuity that strips away 19th-century rhetoric while avoiding the pitfalls of sounding merely ‘his- torically informed’.” The Strad “The Quartetto di Cremona’s magnificent survey of Beethoven’s Complete String Quartets moves securely and unquestionably into mastery...such warm playing; such perfection on a silver disc; what a glory this is.” The Herald CHAMBER MUSIC CONCERTS Thanks our Digital Presentation Underwriters Quartetto di Cremona PROGRAM NOTES PROKOFIEV String Quartet no. 1 in B minor, Op. 50 usicologist Nicholas Kenyon writes “Will the real Sergey Prokofiev please stand Mup? Who is he? There is the wild innovator of the Second Symphony, the brazen noise merchant of the Scythian Suite, the cool classicist of the Classical Symphony, the cheerful satirist of the Love of Three Oranges, the gentle [children’s] educationist of Peter and the Wolf, the historical pageant maker of Ivan the Terrible…Has a composer ever turned so many different faces to the world as Prokofiev?” Kenyon continues: “Several of his works are among the most popular pieces of classical music written during the last hundred years. Romeo and Juliet has become more than a ballet, the stuff of advertising soundtracks and sports theme tunes….Among the great symphonies that conductors want to perform, Prokofiev’s Fifth rates very high.” Also one of the great pianists of his day, his achievement, though uneven, was immense. He wrote in most major genres of the early 20th century. By the time he wrote today’s String Quartet no. 1 in 1930, he’d already written five operas (including Love of Three Oranges, The Gambler, and The Fiery Angel), four symphonies, five piano sonatas and the Visions Fugitives, four ballets (including Trapeze and The Prodigal Son), and many songs. The great film scores (Lieutenant Kije and Alexander Nevsky) lay just ahead. He did not write much chamber music for large ensembles, however. He wrote four such works: the sextet Overture on Hebrew Themes (1919) and his Quintet (1924) for strings and winds precede his two string quartets (1930 and 1942). While Stravinsky’s Pulcinella ballet from 1920 often receives credit as the prominent early work in neo-classicism, it was a style “Prokofiev had helped invent” (New Grove). His Classical Symphony (in similar style and design) precedes Stravinsky by three years. Prokofiev applied similar neo-classic formal structures to the folk tunes of the Karbada region of Russia in his sparkling Second String Quartet, Op. 92. It remains our loss that this prolific composer did not turn to chamber music more often. String Quartet no. 1 also reflects a neo-classic emphasis, as Prokofiev stated that he studied Beethoven’s quartets before writing it. However, its dominant style stems from his earlier modernist works. While the work never completely abandons tonality (and he sets it in the key of B Minor), its omnipresent dissonance recalls Scythian Suite and Sarcasms far more than the Classical Symphony. He sets the first movement in a loose Sonata-form structure, with an intense and fast-paced violin theme built on wide leaps. After a full pause, a quieter, lyrical theme consisting primarily of quarter notes provides the main contrast. Olla-Vogala writes that “The stormy development section is brilliantly crafted in its intensity and subtle thematic elaborations. The reprise fea- tures many imaginative changes in the material, and the movement ends in a sense of urgency.” With his celebrated humor, Prokofiev’s second movement captures the essence of Scherzo: a musical joke. Opening with an extended and dramatic Andante molto, we settle in for the expected slow