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570256bk USA 14/1/07 8:17 pm Page 4 Fine Arts Quartet Founded in Chicago in 1946, the Fine Arts Quartet is one of the most distinguished ensembles in chamber music today, with an illustrious history of performing success and an extensive recording legacy. The Quartet, whose members Ralph Evans, Efim Boico, Yuri Gandelsman, and Wolfgang Laufer are artists-in-residence at the GLAZUNOV University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, is one of the elite few to have recorded and toured internationally for over half a century. Three of the Quartet’s current artists have now been performing together for nearly 25 years. Each season, the Fine Arts Quartet tours worldwide, with concerts in such musical centres as New York, London, Paris, Berlin, Rome, Madrid, Moscow, Tokyo, Beijing, Istanbul, Jerusalem, Mexico City, and Toronto. The Quartet also String Quintet, Op. 39 continues to record new works, adding to its collection of over fifty masterpieces released on CD during the past few years. The latest releases include the complete Schumann Quartets on Naxos (8.570151), and complete Dohnányi Quartets and Quintets on Aulos. Future releases include the complete Bruckner chamber music, the Five Novelettes, Op. 15 Mendelssohn Viola Quintets, and quartets by American composers Antheil, Herrmann, and Evans, on Naxos, and the complete early Beethoven Quartets, and quartets by Shostakovich, on Lyrinx. The Quartet’s recent recordings of the complete Mozart Viola Quintets, released by Lyrinx on SACD, were voted onto the 2003 Grammy entry list Fine Arts Quartet and designated a Critic’s Choice 2003 by the American Record Guide. The Quartet’s commitment to contemporary music also won special recognition: a 2003-2004 national CMA/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming, given jointly by Chamber Music America and the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers. The Nathaniel Rosen, Cello Quartet members have helped form and nurture many of today’s top international young ensembles. They have been guest professors at the celebrated national music conservatories of Paris and Lyon, as well as at two of America’s finest summer music schools, Yale University and Indiana University. They also appear regularly as jury members of major competitions such as Evian, Shostakovich, and Bordeaux. Documentaries on the Fine Arts Quartet have appeared on both French and American Public Television. For more information, please visit www.fineartsquartet.org. Nathaniel Rosen The cellist Nathaniel Rosen gained American recognition upon winning the 1977 International Naumburg Competition, and international stardom the following year when he became the only American cellist ever to win the Gold Medal at the Tchaikovsky International Competition. Since then, he has been the esteemed guest soloist with the world’s foremost orchestras. He began studying the cello at the age of six with Eleonore Schoenfeld in his native California. Seven years later he met the legendary Gregor Piatigorsky, who soon became his teacher and mentor. At seventeen, Nathaniel Rosen toured the Soviet Union as a finalist in the Third International Tchaikovsky Competition, where he was the youngest of the 42 competing cellists, and one of three Americans to win a prize. He returned to Moscow twelve years later (1978) and, with violinist Elmar Oliveira, they became the first Gold Medal- winning American instrumentalists since Van Cliburn (1958). For two seasons he served as principal cellist of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. As principal cellist of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, he gave the première performances of Robert Linn’s Fantasia for Cello and Chamber Orchestra. In 1988, with the violinist Elmar Oliveira, he gave the world première performances of Ezra Laderman’s Concerto for Violin and Cello, commemorating the tenth anniversary of the two soloists’ Gold Medal victories at the Tchaikovsky Competition. Nathaniel Rosen served as Artistic Director of the Interlochen Summer Chamber Music Series and is a founding member of the Sitka Summer Music Festival. His recordings include the Cello Sonatas of Brahms, Tchaikovsky’s Variations on a Rococo Theme, Bach’s Cello Suites, and works by Shostakovich, Granados, Falla, Popper, and Saint-Saëns, among others. He teaches at the Manhattan School of Music, and holds the Chauncey Devereux Stillman Chair for Distinguished Visiting Artist at Thomas More College in New Hampshire. He plays a 1738 Montagnana cello. 8.570256 4 570256bk USA 14/1/07 8:17 pm Page 2 Alexander Glazunov (1865-1936) Glazunov wrote his Five Novelettes, Op.15, in arranged the work for piano duet. Five Novelettes, Op. 15 • String Quintet in A major, Op. 39 1881, originally giving them the less evocative title of In the 1890s Belyayev came to rely on Glazunov’s ‘Suite’, to be replaced at the suggestion of Hans von compositional facility for a series of new works for his It is becoming increasingly unnecessary to defend the critic Laroche, champion of Tchaikovsky and a strong Bülow, distinguished pianist and conductor, former new catalogue of publications and for the entertainment reputation of Glazunov. He belonged to a generation of opponent of the nationalists, a man described by husband of Liszt’s daughter Cosima, who took Wagner of his guests at his Friday evenings. The String Quintet Russian composers that was able to benefit from more Rimsky-Korsakov as the Russian equivalent of as her second husband. The first of the pieces, Alla in A major, Op.39, was written 1891, and scored, like professional standards of compositional technique, Hanslick in Vienna, a comparison that, from him, was spagnuola (In Spanish style) opens with the plucked Schubert’s, with two cellos. The viola starts the first absorbing and helping to create a synthesis of the not entirely complimentary. notes of the cello, in accompaniment to the first melody, movement with a melody from which the first subject national, that might sometimes be expressed crudely Glazunov, however, remained a colleague and with its characteristic rhythm. A trio section starts with section is developed. It is the first cello that initiates the enough, and the technique of the conservatories, that friend of Rimsky-Korsakov, and demonstrated this after a cello melody, but the dance soon resumes. Orientale contrasting Poco più tranquillo in C major, the second might sometimes seem facile. Glazunov worked closely the political disturbance of 1905, when the latter had again starts with the plucked accompanying notes of the subject group. Both elements are duly developed and with Rimsky-Korsakov, to whom Balakirev, his signed a letter of protest at the suppression of some cello, to which the viola adds cross-rhythms, the violins varied before returning transformed in recapitulation, mother’s teacher, had recommended him, and played an element of democracy in Russia and had openly entering with a dancing rhythm over a suggested drone. followed by a coda. A sustained viola note accompanies important part in the education of a new generation of sympathized with Conservatory students who had A lull brings a viola phrase of oriental character, taken the plucked notes of first and then second violin in the F Russian composers such as Shostakovich. joined liberal protests against official policies. Rimsky- up by the other instruments, one after the other, after major Scherzo, before the principal theme is heard Alexander Konstantinovich Glazunov was born in Korsakov was dismissed from the Conservatory, to be which the opening material returns. The third pizzicato from the violins and viola. A trio section in D St Petersburg in 1865, the son of a publisher and reinstated by Glazunov, elected director of an movement, Interludium in modo antico, is in fact in the minor follows, leading to a return of the scherzo and a bookseller. As a child he showed considerable musical institution that, in the aftermath, had now won a Dorian mode, but has distinct allusions to Russian final coda. The cello was an instrument that appealed ability and in 1879 met Balakirev and hence Rimsky- measure of autonomy. Glazunov remained director of tradition in its solemnity. Valse offers an immediate greatly to Glazunov and it is to the second cello that he Korsakov. By the age of sixteen he had finished the first the Conservatory until 1930. contrast, its characteristic accompanying rhythm first entrusts the opening of the D minor Andante sostenuto. of his nine symphonies, which was performed under the In 1928 he left Russia in order to attend the established by the cello and viola. Contrast is provided The main theme is introduced by the first violin, later to direction of Balakirev, whose influence is perceptible in Schubert celebrations in Vienna. Thereafter he with a change of key and mood in the central section be taken up by the first cello, and there is a contrasting the work. The relationship with Balakirev was not to remained abroad, with a busy round of engagements as and increasing excitement before the return of the music section before the return of the original key and continue. The rich timber-merchant Mitrofan Petrovich a conductor, finally settling near Paris until his death in of the opening. The last of the Novelettes is Alla thematic material and the final Agitato ed accelerando Belyayev had been present at the first performance of 1936. ungherese (In Hungarian style). Here again the plucked in D major. The last movement starts in A minor with a the symphony and travelled to Moscow to hear Rimsky- It says much for the esteem in which Glazunov was notes of the cello provide the opening accompanying theme of Russian flavour. The viola introduces a fugal Korsakov conduct a second performance there. He held that he was able to steer the Conservatory through rhythm over which the first violin offers the first subject, followed by a D major passage marked Più attended the Moscow rehearsals and his meeting with years of great hardship, difficulty and political turmoil, Hungarian theme.