PRESENTS Cristiano Gualco, | Paolo Andreoli, violin Simone Gramaglia, | Giovanni Scaglione,

ChamberMusicConcerts.org · 541-552-6154 QUARTETTO DI CREMONA FRIDAY, MAY 21, 2021 – 7:30PM Recorded in Italy for Concerts

Prokofiev (1891-1953) 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 , 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 ’s Rudolfinum, alongside the 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 in C Major, Op. 29 with Lawrence Dutton, violist of the . 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 Klassik 2017 prize. More recently, the Quartet was a winner of the International 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 , the cool classicist of the Classical Symphony, the cheerful satirist of the Love of Three Oranges, the gentle [children’s] educationist of , 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, , and ), four symphonies, five piano sonatas and the , four ballets (including and The ), 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 movement. Instead, it’s merely an introduction to an extensive, Beethovenian scherzo movement in typical ternary form (A B A). A lively theme in 8th and 16th notes receives extensive elaboration before the brief ‘Trio’ sec- tion, cast in legato triplets, opens with a lovely cello theme of great breadth. He con- cludes with a short reprise of the quick opening section, a lighthearted moment in this otherwise dramatic quartet. Like his Russian predecessor Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony, Prokofiev now closes with a dramatic Andante, the slow movement merely hinted at before. Alan Missroon writes that it is “an expressive, heartfelt, impassioned movement…with glimmers of sweet- ness.” Prokofiev felt so highly of it that he wrote a version of it for string . Soviet composer Nikolay Miaskovsky wrote that “there is true profundity in the sweep- ing melodic line and intensity of the finale. The movement strikes deep…” Yet another wondrous side of a composer with myriad faces in his works: “mocking reeds, mischie- vous leaps in the melody, tart and disjointed harmonies, and the sudden fluctuation from the naïve and simple to the unexpected and complex” (Victor and Marina Ledin).

SCHUBERT String Quartet in A Minor, D. 804 “Rosamunde” (1824)

“Among 19th-century composers of the highest rank, Schubert is the only one whose lifetime fame was significantly at odds with his later glory” writes Schubert biographer Christopher Gibbs. Most of the great instrumental works of his maturity in the 1820s – the final string quartets, piano trios, symphonies, piano sonatas and the C Major string quintet – went unheard and undiscovered by his contemporaries, and this accounts for the discrepancy. Ironically, with his Lieder and dances, Schubert became “one of the most widely published and performed of all Viennese composers in the 1820s” (Gibbs). Yet with so many of his operas and the larger, more prestigious instrumental genres unknown when he died in 1828, “few people would have considered his life worthy of a substantial [biography]” (Gibbs). Tonight’s A Minor string quartet was Schubert’s first complete, mature chamber music masterpiece. The discovery of all these instrumental treasures finally prompted the first major biography of Schubert (by Heinrich Kreissle) in 1864 – almost 40 years after his death. Schubert grew up in a musical family playing and writing string quartets. Most of these eleven quartets are youthful and experimental works, and Schubert’s groundbreak- ing success with his Lieder soon turned him away from the genre. In early 1824, eight years after his last complete quartet, he finally returned to chamber music with the A Minor and D Minor string quartets and the Octet. This A Minor quartet is the first one Schubert deemed worthy of publication, and was the only quartet performed in its entirety and published during his lifetime. Now a mature composer with extraordinarily expressive power, “something entirely new and different from either Beethoven or Mozart makes its appearance” writes musicologist Leon Botstein. This wonderfully lyrical quartet opens with a gesture not seen in the quartets of Haydn, Mozart, or Beethoven. As in the Lieder he was already so famous for, Schubert opens with two bars of accompaniment for the haunting eight- bar violin primary theme. Like the piano part in a song, this complex, multi-layered accompaniment continues in the lower strings for the next 20 bars. Quartets before Schubert almost always began immediately with the primary theme.

This Sonata-form first movement also contains more substantial differences from Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. In revolutinary fashion Schubert enriched the harmonic and tonal language of those composers with a continuous, de-stablizing mix of major and minor modes simultaneously. After the opening minor-mode theme, Schubert jar- ringly presents it in major mode as well, and then returns to the minor mode before modulating to the secondary key – something earlier composers never attempted. He does it again with the balanced, five-bar statements of the C Major secondary theme, soon offering a C Minor version before new material closes the movement. Musicolo- gist Richard Tarsukin writes that «Schubert was the chief pioneer» of such harmoni- cally colorful techniques.

He fashions a delightfully pastoral and tender Sonata-rondo second movement in C Major, which he borrows from his incidental music for the play “Rosamunde.” After the lyrical 16-bar theme in C Major, a gentle transition leads us to the repeated-pitch and trill of the violin for the secondary theme in G Major. Both themes are ultimately repeated in the tonic, framing a stormy but brief development section. Many commen- tators link this outburst to Schubert’s passionate grappling with the venereal disease which first appeared the previous year (and which ultimaetly claimed his life). Such passion often appears in the following movement as well, with the disruptive accents in the otherwise charming Allegretto Minuet and Trio. It opens with the dark hues of the cello that borrows a theme from Schubert’s song Die Gotter Griechenlands with its text «Fair world, where art thou?» Despite the occasional outburst, this gentle, song-like quartet begins every movement softly (pianissimo). Such is the case with the opening theme of this light-hearted Sona- ta-Rondo finale, a lively take on Hungarian gypsy style with many lively accents on weak, second beats. And listen once again for that characteristic and revolutionary modal mixture, as Schubert offers a lyrical eight-bar primary theme in A Major – which you›ll soon hear in A Minor. Such chromaticism in Haydn, Mozart or Beethoven would signal the modulation toward the secondary key. But with Schubert it›s all color, as he›s still in the home key. Furthermore, the dotted-rhythm secondary theme is all har- monic instability, never settling into either C-sharp Minor or E Major for long in this delightfully pastoral movement. With such exmaples as these, the late musicologist Charles Rosen writes that “In spite of Schubert’s enormous debt to Mozart and Beethoven, we can see that his forms are no longer theirs.” All his late instrumental works contain such lyrical magic – “only Beethoven had written a longer and more ambitious symphony before Schubert’s 9th” (Gibbs). WIth the publication of Kreissle’s 1864 biography, Schubert’s complete acheivements finally recieved their due, and he’s been at the forefront of 19th-century composition and performance ever since.

Program notes by Ed Wight THANK YOU TO OUR SUPPORTERS We truly appreciate the generous contributions of our loyal supporters. Your gifts help CMC cover the costs of production, administration, and expensive artist fees, allowing our ticket prices to remain affordable. Please call 541-552-6154 or visit ChamberMusicConcerts. org for details on how you can support world-class chamber music.

GRANTS: Steven & Bari Frimkess Barth Family Fund Alice Hardesty Coronavirus Relief Fund for Cultural Support Barry Harris Oregon Arts Commission, a State Agency William & Suzanne Hering Arthur & Mechtild Howard Chamber Music Leadership: $8000+ John & Kay Johnson Anonymous Jeanette Larson Cynthia & Norman Lawrence Chamber Music Circle: $4000-$7999 Pix Morgan Anonymous Roger & Christine Moore Anne C. Diller Tim & Teri O’Rourke Dr. Margaret Evans JoAnn Prujan Karen Gernant & Louis Roemer Herb & Mary-Jean Singleton Richard Hay Fred Sommer Dr. Mary Jane Morrison Russy & Anita Sumariwalla Oregon Arts Commission, a State Agency U.S. Bank Wealth Management Donna Ritchie Steven & Priscilla Weaver Retina Care Center: Dr. Rinkoff, Dr. AufderHeide, Dr. Diaz Karen & George Wilson Wayne Thomas & Carole Brown Vince & Patty Wixon

Chamber Music Society: $1000-$3999 Benefactors: $500-$999 Patrick Alexander Gail Alexander, in memory of Joel Feiner Marc & Susann Allen Paul & Priscilla Arnold Marilyn Anderson & Bill Tout Ann Bard Atchison Emerging Artist Fund Sol & Virginia Blechman K Richard & Patricia Berlet J. Bryant & Baiba Calhoun Sandy Burd Jean Conger Jan Craigie John & Lynne Dolan Kenneth Deveney Gary & Coralie Farnham Chris Donchin Steven & Bari Frimkess Ernest Ettlich Flora Henningsen Daphne Fautin & Bob Buddemeier Suzanne Lang Ellen Fowler Ted Michel & Mona Anthony David & Alexandra Myers Patrons: $125-$249 Ann Strauss Oregon Pacific Bank Terry Ansnes Lawrence & Saundra Theis Fred & Laura Perloff Terry Cain Victoria Weiss Susan Plass René Casteran Thomas & Margery Winter Ruth & Ellen Reiterman Peter DeGroot & Myrl Bishop Ilana Rubenfeld Mary Eddington ESTERHAZY SOCIETY ESTATE GIFTS Marilyn Salter Joyce Epstein Peter Brunner John & Margaret Scarborough David & Carole Florian Jean Conger Andrew Smith Mary W. Gillespie Betty Jane Darling Sandra Sobol & Jon Holtzman John & Judith Kloetzel Anne F. Decker Julia Sommer Alan Levine Kurt & Billie Raye Erlings Thomas & Cynthia Stauffer Joan Linkogle Ernest Ettlich Samuel & Suzanne Mitchell Gary & Coralie Farnham Sustainers: $250-$499 Priscilla & Alan Oppenheimer John & Carol Fox John Alexander Susan Rust Jon & JoAnn Harbaugh Grace Chu & David Appleby Colleen Searle Alice Hardesty Jan Gorden Michael Smith & Nora Carol Ingelson Leestma Suzanne & William Hering Rebecca Kilburn Robert Wetmore Mary Lou Heumann Rick & Judy Lindemann L Neil & Ardyth White Arthur & Mechtild Howard Nancy Menken Janice Williams Edward & Sheila Hungerford Ann Montgomery Elisabeth Zinser Tom & Joy Lowell Donald & Dawn Morris Alicia MacArthur Mark A. Newberger Friends: $60-$124 Ann Macrory Philanthropic Fund of the Elizabeth Aitken Lewis & Nancy Owen Dallas Jewish Community Mary Coombs Alexis Packer Foundation Donna Gould Lorna Patterson Frank & Patricia Nichols Sandra Hendrickson Donna Ritchie Russell Otte & Sara Hopkins Andrea King-Brockman Ilana Rubenfeld Paula Phillips Susanne Krieg Herb & Mary Jean Singleton Frederick & Heather Schmidt Karen Leng Phyllis Skinner & William Earle & Vanya Sloan Barbara Mathieson Matthews John Strong Don Matthews & Judith Rosen Wayne Thomas & Carole Robert Walden Brown Deborah Mattsson Cynthia White Nancy Mendenhall Jon & Suzanne Polich Wallace & Janet Ross Dean Shutt Dean & Sarah Silver