The Sixteenth Season: Creative Capitals July 13–August 4, 2018 WELCOME to MUSIC@MENLO
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CHAMBER MUSIC FESTIVAL AND INSTITUTE The Sixteenth Season: Creative Capitals July 13–August 4, 2018 WELCOME TO MUSIC@MENLO Dear Friends, A city is the embodiment of a civilized society. Throughout history, cities have enticed our most bril- liant, visionary, and restless souls seeking to pursue artistic destinies in stimulating environments. While the Grand Canyon and Niagara Falls are indeed natu- ral wonders, great cities are indisputably among the most significant achievements of humankind, works of art in themselves. This season, seven iconic cities serve as our festival’s musical stages: London, Paris, St. Petersburg, Leipzig, Berlin, Budapest, and Vienna. The music that has emanated from these cultural centers largely forms the canon of Western music, comprising an astonishingly diverse repertoire spanning some three hundred years. It is with enormous excitement that we prepare to transport ourselves to these incredible locales, through the music we’ll perform, by listening to AudioNotes, and by attending the three Encounters, which will delve deeply into each city’s history and culture. The vivid contextual background of our seven cit- ies will bring us inside the composers’ worlds, providing us with a deeper, more intuitive understanding of their music. Among the coming festival’s many highlights are four Carte Blanche Concerts, whose repertoire echoes the season theme; an array of returning favorite per- formers as well as Music@Menlo debut artists; an innovative new mini-series combining International Program performers and main-stage artists; the festi- val’s first sculptor as this season’s Visual Artist; and the exciting announcement of a new incarnation of the Winter Series. All of these newsworthy features are accompanied by the festival’s signature components: ear-opening master classes, fascinating Café Conversations, jaw-dropping Prelude Performances, and heartwarming Koret Young Performers Concerts. And then, of course, there are the parties! As our seven cities attracted so many immortal composers, we hope that the very special world of Music@Menlo holds a similar attraction, year after year, for listen- ers of all ages and backgrounds. The gates of our own inspiring city are always open—please come inside! David Finckel and Wu Han Artistic Directors The Martin Family Artistic Directorship 2 subscribe at www.musicatmenlo.org | 650-331-0202 Contents Welcome 2 Welcome from the Artistic Directors 4 Festival Introduction Concerts 6 Concert Programs 20 Carte Blanche Concerts 23 Overture Concerts 25 Prelude Performances and Koret Young Performers Concerts 26 Music@Menlo:Focus 2018–2019 38 Festival Calendar Discovery and Engagement 22 Michael Steinberg Encounter Series 23 AudioNotes 23 Music@Menlo LIVE 23 Broadcasting 24 Chamber Music Institute 25 Prelude Performances and Koret Young Performers Concerts 25 Café Conversations and Master Classes 33 Music@Menlo Patron Travel Artists 5 Artist Roster 27 Visual Artist 27 Artist Biographies Ticket and Patron Information 32 Join Music@Menlo 34 Reserving Your Summer Festival Tickets 34 Summer Festival Subscriber Information 36 The Festival Campus and Performance Venues 37 For Visitors to Our Area 37 Map and Parking 38 Festival Calendar subscribe at www.musicatmenlo.org | 650-331-0202 3 4 subscribe at www.musicatmenlo.org | 650-331-0202 CREATIVE CAPITALS Time and again, from fourteenth-century Florence to fin-de-siècle Paris and New York during the Harlem Renaissance, Western civilization’s greatest artistic triumphs have emerged from the fertile ground of thriving metropolises. Fueled by the exchange of ideas and the incubation of great art, leading artists and innovators have gathered, turning these cities into cultural epicenters. Music@Menlo’s 2018 season celebrates seven of Western music’s most flourishing creative capitals—London, Paris, St. Petersburg, Leipzig, Berlin, Budapest, and Vienna. Many of history’s greatest composers have helped to define the spirit of these flagship cities through their music. ARTISTS Piano Cello Brass Michael Brown Dmitri Atapine Kevin Rivard, horn Gloria Chien Efe Baltacigil* Voice Gilbert Kalish Nicholas Canellakis Lyubov Petrova, soprano* Hyeyeon Park David Finckel Sara Couden, contralto Jon Kimura Parker David Requiro* Kang Wang, tenor* Gilles Vonsattel Keith Robinson Wu Han Encounter Leaders Bass Ara Guzelimian Violin Scott Pingel John R. Hale* Aaron Boyd Calidore String Quartet Michael Parloff Ivan Chan† Jeffrey Myers, violin Bella Hristova Ryan Meehan, violin *Music@Menlo debut Paul Huang Jeremy Berry, viola †Guest artist-faculty Alexi Kenney* Estelle Choi, cello Kristin Lee Amy Schwartz Moretti* Woodwinds Arnaud Sussmann Demarre McGill, flute Wu Jie Stephanie McNab, flute* Angelo Xiang Yu* Stephen Taylor, oboe Jose Franch-Ballester, clarinet Viola Anthony McGill, clarinet Roberto Díaz Peter Kolkay, bassoon Matthew Lipman Paul Neubauer Richard O’Neill The Monumental Entrance at the Place de la Concorde, Exposition Universelle, Paris, 1900, lithograph. Private collection/The Stapleton Collection/Bridgeman Images subscribe at www.musicatmenlo.org | 650-331-0202 5 6 subscribe at www.musicatmenlo.org | 650-331-0202 CONCERT PROGRAM I LONDON For some two hundred years following the death of Henry Purcell, England failed to produce a composer of international merit. The German critic Oscar A. H. Schmitz famously derided the nation as Das Land ohne Musik (“The land without music”). But throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, England nevertheless remained fertile creative ground; London in particular attracted many of the continent’s greatest composers—from Handel and Mendelssohn to Edvard Grieg—who in turn helped make that city one of the Western world’s musical capitals. Music@Menlo 2018’s opening program cel- ebrates London’s cosmopolitan musical energy, juxtaposing these expatriate masters with two fresh voices of English music’s early twentieth-century renaissance, Benjamin Britten and Ralph Vaughan Williams. George Frideric Handel (1685–1759) SATURDAY, JULY 14 Concerto Grosso in D Major, op. 6, no. 5, 6:00 p.m., The Center for Performing Arts HWV 323 (1739) at Menlo-Atherton Felix Mendelssohn (1809–1847) Tickets: $72/$62 full price; $30/$20 under Fugue in E-flat Major for String Quartet, age thirty op. 81, no. 4 (1827) Prelude Performance* Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958) 3:30 p.m., The Center for Performing Arts Songs of Travel (1901, 1904) at Menlo-Atherton Benjamin Britten (1913–1976) Suite for Violin and Piano, op. 6 (1934–1935) * Prelude Performances feature young artists from the Chamber Music Institute. Edvard Grieg (1843–1907) Admission is free. For more information, Holberg Suite for Strings, op. 40 (1884, arr. 1885) see pp. 24–25. Fête the Festival ARTISTS 8:30 p.m., following the concert Kang Wang, tenor; Hyeyeon Park, harpsichord; Join the Artistic Directors, festival musicians, Gloria Chien, Gilbert Kalish, pianos; and friends on July 14 to celebrate the Paul Huang, Amy Schwartz Moretti, season’s first concert at an outdoor catered Arnaud Sussmann, Wu Jie, Angelo Xiang Yu, dinner reception on the Menlo School violins; Roberto Díaz, Matthew Lipman, violas; campus. Dmitri Atapine, Efe Baltacigil, David Finckel, (Tickets: $75. Advance purchase required.) cellos; Scott Pingel, bass “The Houses of Parliament at Night,” City of Westminster, London, black-and-white photo. Photo credit: HIP/Art Resource, NY subscribe at www.musicatmenlo.org | 650-331-0202 7 8 subscribe at www.musicatmenlo.org | 650-331-0202 CONCERT PROGRAM II PARIS No city captivates the imagination quite like Paris. For generations, the world’s leading artists, writers, and thinkers—to say nothing of its young lovers and starry-eyed dreamers—have flocked to La Ville Lumière. Her splendor has inspired some of the Western world’s most innovative cinema, elegant cuisine, and irresistible music. Towards the turn of the century, after opera had domi- nated French musical life for decades, Camille Saint-Saëns, César Franck, and others led a resurgence of chamber music. In their wake came some of the twentieth century’s most refreshing musical voices, from Jean Françaix to Francis Poulenc and the enfants terribles of Les Six. Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921) TUESDAY, JULY 17 Piano Trio no. 1 in F Major, op. 18 (1864) 7:30 p.m., The Center for Performing Arts Francis Poulenc (1899–1963) at Menlo-Atherton Sextet for Wind Quintet and Piano, op. 100 Tickets: $72/$62 full price; $30/$20 under (1932–1939) age thirty Jean Françaix (1912–1997) Prelude Performance* String Trio (1933) 5:00 p.m., The Center for Performing Arts César Franck (1822–1890) at Menlo-Atherton Piano Quintet in f minor (1879) * Prelude Performances feature young ARTISTS artists from the Chamber Music Institute. Demarre McGill, flute; Stephen Taylor, oboe; Admission is free. For more information, Jose Franch-Ballester, clarinet; Peter Kolkay, see pp. 24–25. bassoon; Kevin Rivard, horn; Jon Kimura Parker, Wu Han, pianos; Paul Huang, Angelo Xiang Yu, violins; Matthew Lipman, viola; Dmitri Atapine, Efe Baltacigil, cellos Jean Beraud (1849–1935). Outside the Vaudeville Theatre, Paris, nineteenth century, oil on canvas. Private collection/ Photo © Christie’s Images/Bridgeman Images subscribe at www.musicatmenlo.org | 650-331-0202 9 10 subscribe at www.musicatmenlo.org | 650-331-0202 CONCERT PROGRAM III ST. PETERSBURG Built in 1703 by Peter the Great to be a cosmopolitan, Western-style metropolis, St. Petersburg emerged over subsequent decades as the center of Russian musical culture. It was