Presents a

FIFTEEN CONSECUTIVE SUNDAY AFTERNOONS ONE SATURDAY TWILIGHT CONCERT IN MEMORIAM: SEPTEMBER 11, 2001 THE AMERNET STRING QUARTET

MISHA VITENSON, VIOLIN, MICHAEL KLOTZ, VIOLA FRANZ FELKL, VIOLIN JASON CALLOWAY, CELLO

ASSISTING ARTIST ALEXANDER FITERSTEIN, CLARINET FIFTEENTH SUNDAY CONCERT, SEPTEMBER 11, 2016 at 3:00 P.M.

EIGHTY-SEVENTH YEAR 2016 www.musicmountain.org 860-824-7126 Steinway Piano AIR CONDITIONED

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2016

THE ARTISTS

THE AMERNET STRING QUARTET Lauded for their “intelligence” and “immensely satisfying” playing by the New York Times, the AMERNET STRING QUARTET has garnered worldwide praise and recognition as one of today’s exceptional string quartets. Ensemble-in-Residence at Florida International University since 2004, the group was formed in 1991 while its founding members were students at the Juilliard School and rose to international attention after their first season, winning the gold medal at the Tokyo International Music Competition in 1992 followed by the first prize at the Banff International String Quartet Competition in 1995. Their busy performance schedule has taken the quartet across the Americas, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East and they have collaborated with many of today’s most prominent artists. The Amernet has always been committed to the music of our time and has commissioned works from many of today’s leading composers, working closely with composers including John Corigliano, Toshi Ichiyanagi, and Morton Subotnick. The Amernet actively advocates for neglected works of the past, particularly those by composers of the Jewish diaspora and aims to enliven the concert experience through its innovative, curated programming. Please visit www.amernetquartet.com

ALEXANDER FITERSTEIN, CLARINET Clarinetist Alexander Fiterstein is considered one of today’s most exceptional artists and has performed in recital and with distinguished orchestras and chamber music ensembles throughout the world. He won First Prize at the Carl Nielsen International Clarinet Competition in 2001 and a prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant in 2009. As a soloist he has appeared with the Belgrade Philharmonic, Czech, Israel, Vienna and St. Paul Chamber Orchestras, Danish National Radio Symphony, Tokyo Philharmonic, China National Symphony Orchestra, KBS Orchestra of South Korea, Jerusalem Symphony, Orchestra of St. Luke’s at Lincoln Center, and the Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela. He has performed in recital on the “Music at the Supreme Court” Series, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and Celebrity Series in Boston, Kennedy Center, the Louvre in Paris, Suntory Hall in Tokyo, Tel Aviv Museum and NYC’s 92d Street Y. A dedicated performer of chamber music, Mr. Fiterstein frequently collaborates with distinguished artists and ensembles and regularly performs with the prestigious Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. Among the highly regarded artists he has performed with are Daniel Barenboim, Mitsuko Uchida, Richard Goode, Emanuel Ax, Pinchas Zukerman and Steven Isserlis. During the 2015-16 season he performed as a soloist with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra on a tour to Asia with concerts in Taiwan, Singapore and Indonesia and with the Kansas City Symphony and conductor Michael Stern. He also collaborated with the Shanghai and Dover Quartets and appeared at the Music @ Menlo and Montreal Chamber Music Festival. Mr. Fiterstein has a prolific recording career and has worked with composers John Corigliano and Osvaldo Golijov and had pieces written for him by Samuel Adler, Mason Bates, Paul Schoenfield, and Chris Brubeck among others. His most recent recording released by Naxos in 2013 is a performance of Sean Hickey’s Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra with the St. Petersburg State Academic Symphony. Mr. Fiterstein was born in Belarus and immigrated to Israel at age of two with his family. He graduated from the Juilliard School and is the clarinet professor at the University of Minnesota. Mr. Fiterstein is a Buffet Crampon and Vandoren Performing Artist.

Canaan VFW Couch Pipa Post 6851 Color Guard US Army, Ed Osborne Don Hurlbutt James Brazee

Marine Corp League Northwest Detachment 042 Color Guard Marine Corp League, Nick Gandolfo Denis Bailey Brian Richardson Russell Duntz Wayne Wilson, US Navy

THE PROGRAM SEPTEMBER 11, 2016 SEPTEMBER 11, 2001: WE WILL NEVER FORGET PRESENTATION OF THE COLORS: COLOR GUARD FROM CANAAN VFW POST #6851 ALL STAND

KLEZMER WORKS FOR CLARINET QUINTET Lev Zhurbin Street Song (1978-) Zogechts and Freilachs Sirba (The is the first performance of this work by Lev Zhurbin at Music Mountain)

STRING QUARTET IN F MINOR, OPUS 95 “SERIOSO” Ludwig van Beethoven (1810) (1770-1827) Allegro con brio Allegretto ma non troppo Allegro assai vivace ma serioso Larghetto: Allegretto agitato (This is the 34th performance of this quartet at Music Mountain)

INTERMISSION CLARINET QUINTET IN B MINOR, OPUS 115 Johannes Brahms (1891) (1833-1897) Allegro Adagio Andantino; Presto non assai, ma sentimento Con moto

(This is the 15th performance of the Clarinet Quintet at Music Mountain)

ADAGIO FROM THE STRING QUARTET IN B MINOR, Samuel Barber OPUS 11 (1936) (1910-1981) Molto adagio; Molto allegro (This is the 9th performance of all or part of the Barber Opus 11 Quartet at Music Mountain)

RETIRING OF THE COLORS: COLOR GUARD FROM CANAAN VFW POST 6851 ALL STAND (The United States Flag displayed on the Music Mountain Flagpole flew over the US Capitol in March, 2014) This program uses the same typefaces and design as the original Music Mountain programs of the 1930s. The typefaces are New Century Schoolbook and TommyOpil by Opticraft. The cover drawing is from the first Music Mountain poster in the 1930’s.

PROGRAM NOTES September 11, 2016

KLEZMER WORKS FOR CLARINET QUINTET Lev Zhurbin (1978-) Hailed by the New York Times as “dizzyingly versatile... an eclectic with an ear for texture... strikingly original and soulful”, Ljova (Lev Zhurbin) was born in 1978 in Moscow, Russia, and moved to New York with his parents, composer Alexander Zhurbin and writer Irena Ginzburg, in 1990. He divides his time between composing for the concert stage, contemporary dance & film, leading his own ensemble LJOVA AND THE KONTRABAND, as well as a busy career as a freelance violist, violinist & musical arranger. Among recent projects is a commission from the City of London Sinfonia, a string quartet for Brooklyn Rider new works for Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble, The Knights, Sybarite5 and A Far Cry, as well arrangements for the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Alan Pierson and the Brooklyn Philharmonic, tenor Javier Camarena, conductor Alondra de la Parra, the Mexican songwriter Natalia Lafourcade, composer/guitarist Gustavo Santaolalla, and collaborations with choreographers Aszure Barton, Damian Woetzel, Christopher Wheeldon, Katarzyna Skarpetowska (with Parsons Dance) and Eduardo Vilaro (with Ballet Hispanico).

STRING QUARTET IN F MINOR, OPUS 95 “SERIOSO” Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) Beethoven’s Opus 95 Quartet is the only one Beethoven supplied with a subtitle “Serioso,” an obvious reference to the prevailing somber mood of the piece. The composer’s grow- ing deafness, precarious health, frustration in love, financial insecurity and unhappy family life combined to make him angry, bitter and deeply despondent. In a letter to his old friend Dr. Franz Wegeler on May 2, 1810 he wrote “If I had not read somewhere that no one should quit life voluntarily while he could still do something worthwhile, I would have been dead long ago and certainly by my own hand. Oh, life is so beautiful but for me it is poisoned forever.” Although quite short, the “Serioso” Quartet, which Men- delssohn called Beethoven’s most characteristic work, is certainly not a miniature. It is a compressed, concentrat- ed composition, highly integrated movement to movement, with an emotional range that far exceeds its limited length. Usually classified as one of the final works of Beethoven’s middle period, many of its pages anticipate the exalted third period quartets that would follow fourteen years later. The F Minor Quartet first entered the Music Mountain repertory on September 15, 1935 in a performance by the Gordon String Quartet, Music Mountain’s founding quar- tet.

QUINTET FOR CLARINET AND STRINGS IN B MINOR, OPUS 115 By Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) One of the two true masterpieces of the literature for clarinet and string quartet (The other being the Mozart Clarinet Quintet) The Brahms Clarinet Quintet has long been a beloved work for its joy, its melancholy, its rapture, its sadness. Written in 1891 in what one scholar refers to as “a surge of fresh creative power” Brahms was inspired by the clarinetist Richard Muhlfield, whom he called the greatest wind player alive. Brahms wrote not only the Clarinet Quintet for him but also the Clarinet Trio in A Minor, Opus 114 and the two Clarinet Sonatas of Opus 120. It is interesting to learn more about this artist who was able to inspire the greatest composer of his generation to start composing again after he had resolved to retire. Richard Muhlfield was born in 1856, the youngest of four brothers, all of whom were musically trained. He played the violin and clarinet in the spa orchestra at Salzungen under his father until 1873 when he went to the court orchestra at Saxe-Meiningen as a violinist. In 1879 he was made the orchestra’s principal clarinetist, a post he held until his death in 1907. Among the conductors of the orchestra were the great Hans von Bulow and Fritz Steinbach, who introduced Muhlfield to Brahms. Muhlfield was asked to play for Brahms and the result was this late blooming by the composer and four great works for clarinet. Muhlfield gave the premiere of all of them. The Quintet and the Trio on December 12, 1891 with the Joachim Quartet joining him in the Quintet and for the Trio, Brahms at the piano and Robert Hausman, the Joachim Quartet’s cellist, playing the cello part. The premiere performances of the Sonatas were in Vienna on Jan 7, 1895 again with Brahms at the piano. Brahms so enjoyed playing with Muhlfield and traveling throughout Germany and Austria with the Sonatas that he gave Muhlfield performing rights fees during his lifetime, all fees from their joint performances and the manuscripts of both Sonatas after publication. Muhlfield achieved international renown, traveled all over Europe and England, continued his collaboration with the Joachim Quartet and inspired a host of other composers to write pieces for him, none, unfortunately, with the genius of Brahms. His performances are said to have been dramatic and very moving. The Brahms Clarinet Quintet was first played at Music Mountain on July 4, 1948 by the Berkshire String Quartet and the clarinetist Victor Polatschek. The clarinet players in the audience will know Polatschek from his Advanced Studies For The Clarinet, a 55 page collection of 28 etudes for clarinet in which each etude imitates the style of a specific classical composer or musical selection.

ADAGIO FROM THE STRING QUARTET, OPUS 11 Samuel Barber (1910-1981) Samuel Barber had announced his vocation in a note written to his mother at the age of nine: “I was meant to be a composer and will be I’m sure… Don’t ask me to try to forget this unpleasant thing and go play football–please.” The Adagio for Strings was arranged for string orchestra from the slow movement of Barber’s string quartet of 1936 and played in this form by the NBC Symphony Orchestra under Toscanini in New York two years later. In this form, it became not only his most popular work, but also an unofficial American anthem of mourning, played after the deaths of Presidents Roosevelt and Kennedy. The two versions, string quartet and string orchestra, make their own separate effect. The string quartet version, as you would expect, is intimate and occurs in the context of other movements. Not surprising for an artist with wide literary interests, Barber found initial inspiration in a passage from Virgil’s Georgics describing how a rivulet gradually becomes a large river. Although the idea doesn’t limit the Adagio’s emotional meaning, you can see how it influences the overall shape of the work -- a long arch beginning quietly gradually building to an overwhelming climax, and winding down to a quiet end. Barber constructs the long-lined, spiralling theme from musical sequence -- that is, a group of notes is repeated slightly higher (as in this case) or lower. Sequence is the most elementary form of variation, and most composers learn to use it sparingly. Barber builds an entire piece from it. Composers like Aaron Copeland, William Schuman, Roy Harris, and Ned Rorem -- not all of them sympathetic to Barber’s music in general -- look at this work and shake their heads, wondering how he pulled it off. They fall back on phrases like “finely felt,” “poetic,” “nothing phoney,” “a love affair.” There’s no real complication to the Adagio, no technique or unusual turn of harmony that holds the secret of its success. One cannot even pick one passage over another, any more than you can say one point makes the beauty of an arch. This is a masterpiece. – Steve Schwartz –Adapted from classicals.net The first Music Mountain performance of the Barber Adagio was by the Manhattan String Quartet on July 21, 1984. THIS IS THE FINAL CONCERT OF MUSIC MOUNTAIN’S 87TH SEASON

THE 88TH MUSIC MOUNTAIN SEASON OPENS ON SUNDAY, JUNE 11, 2017 AT 3PM PETER SERKIN, PIANO STEFAN JACKIW, VIOLIN JAY CAMPBELL, CELLO Haydn: Piano Trio in G Major, Opus 73 # 2 “Gypsy” Schubert: Piano Trio in B Flat Major, Opus 99, D.898 Beethoven: Piano Trio in B Flat Major, Opus 97 “Archduke”

Thank You for being with us for the 87th Season of Music Mountain.

Visit our website after October 1, 2016 for our full 2017 Schedule.

Children 5-18 Admitted at No Charge (When accompanied by a ticket holder) Attorneys at Law

Linda M. Patz Michael P. Citrin

7 Church Street, Canaan, CT 06018

(860) 824-7777 The Music Mountain Corporation & Board of Managers Nicholas Gordon*, President Kathy Herald-Marlowe*, Vice President, Treasurer Ann McKinney*, Vice President, Secretary Sal Accardo* Carr Ferguson* Robert Layton Betsy Alderman* Estelle Gordon* Humbert Lucarelli* Fredrick Baumgarten* Helen Gordon* Ann McKinney* David Conte* Nicholas Gordon* Thomas Morrison* Charles Cook* Alice Gustafson* Daniel O’Connor Carol Couch* Tiziana Hardy Amy D. Schuchat* David Crum* Kathy Herald-Marlowe* Randy Williams* Katherine Crum* Louise W. King* *Member, Board of Managers Music Mountain Staff 2016 Festival Manager - Richard Liverano Interns - Hope Aubrey, Vanessa Ague Music Mountain was founded in 1930 by Jacques Gordon (1899-1948) Only Minutes from Lime Rock Park Race Track Ice - Ice Cold Beer Large Selection of Domestic & Imported Wines Robain L. Dionne, Permittee Summer Hours: M-Th. 10-8; Fri. & Sat. 10-9; Sun. Closed 860-435-2600 336 Main Street, P.O. Box 1837 Lakeville, Connecticut 06039 The Music Mountain Chamber Music broadcasts are made possible through the generosity of Edward R. Hamilton Bookseller Company, Falls Village, CT For a free catalog of books on Music, Art, and 60 other subjects, write: Edward R. Hamilton Bookseller Company, P.O. Box 15, Falls Village, CT 06031. On the web at www.hamiltonbook.com

You may listen to Music Mountain Chamber Music concert broadcasts at any time. Just go to www.musicmountain.org, click on “Listen on Line.” This will take you to the Music Mountain site at www.InstantEncore.com. Each week throughout the year you can listen to the Music Mountain concerts Saturday at 2 P.M. or Monday at 7 P.M. on WHDD-FM 91.9/1020AM, Sharon, CT; WBSL-FM 91.7 Sheffi eld, MA; WLHV-FM 88.1, Annandale-On-Hudson, or WGHQ 920 AM, Kingston, NY. WHDD streams its programming on the internet. The concerts can also be heard in this area on WJMJ-FM, Hartford, CT 88.9, 93.1 and 107.1 Friday at 10pm and Pawling, NY, Public Radio, 101.7 Sunday at 4pm

VFW VETERANS OF FOREIGN WARS

COUCH-PIPA POST NO. 6851 Garden Center & Landscaping 104 South Canaan Road garden shop ~ design ~ maintenance Rt 44, Salisbury, CT - 860 435 2439 Canaan, CT 06018-0913

Music Mountain is supported, in part, by the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism.

1-888-CTvisit / CTvisit.com

Hear Music Mountain Concerts on WHDD Saturdays 2 PM & Mondays 7 PM

Music Mountain Box Office: 860-824-7126 Printing & Advertising Sales by Print Master. 860-824-7565 Press Representative: Peter Cromarty & Co. Public Relations - 212-580-4222

The cooperation of the audience in keeping noise to a minimum is greatly appreciated.

PLEASE GIVE US YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS FOR NEWS FROM MUSIC MOUNTAIN

NAME ______

MAILING ADDRESS ______

CITY ______STATE ______ZIP ______

EMAIL ______