Calder Quartet
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CAL PERFORMANCES PRESENTS PROGRAM Sunday, October 2, 2011, 3pm Franz Liszt (1811–1886) Petrarch Sonnet No. 123 (I’ vidi in terra angelici Hertz Hall costumi) from Années de Pèlerinage, Deuxième Année: Italie for Piano (1845) Calder Quartet Adès The Four Quarters for String Quartet (2010) Nightfalls Benjamin Jacobson violin Serenade: Morning Dew Andrew Bulbrook violin Days Jonathan Moerschel viola The Twenty-fifth Hour Eric Byers cello with Adès Quintet for Piano and String Quartet, Thomas Adès, piano Op. 20 (2000) PROGRAM Cal Performances’ 2011–2012 season is sponsored by Wells Fargo. Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971) Three Pieces for String Quartet (1914) Dance: Quarter note = 126 Eccentric: Quarter note = 76 Canticle: Half note = 40 Thomas Adès (b. 1971) Mazurkas for Piano, Op. 27 (2009) Moderato, molto rubato Prestissimo molto espressivo Grave, maestoso Adès Arcadiana for String Quartet (1994) Venezia notturna Das klinget so herrlich, das klinget so schön Auf dem Wasser zu singen Et... (tango mortale) L’Embarquement O Albion Lethe INTERMISSION 6 CAL PERFORMANCES CAL PERFORMANCES 7 PROGRAM NOTES PROGRAM NOTES Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971) music at the time. He later explained the move- prominence—the piano solos Still Sorrowing American premiere at Santa Fe Opera in July Three Pieces for String Quartet ment’s inspiration in an interview with Robert and Darknesse Visible, the song cycles Five Eliot 2006 and has been announced for the 2012– Craft: “I had been fascinated by the movements Landscapes and Life Story, Catch and Living Toys 2013 Metropolitan Opera season. Composed in 1914. Premiered on November 8, of Little Tich, whom I had seen in London in for chamber orchestra—and in 1993 he was ap- The distinguished critic Andrew Porter 1915, in Chicago by the Flonzaley Quartet. 1914, and the jerky, spastic movement, the ups pointed Composer-in-Association to the Hallé wrote of Adès’s creative personality, “In work and downs, the rhythm—even the mood or joke Orchestra; he composed These Premises Are after work—non-repeating, non-formulaic, In April 1914, to recover from the rigors of of the music—which I later called Eccentric, Alarmed in 1996 for the Hallé’s inaugural con- untainted by ‘hype,’ each score an excited new supervising the premiere in Paris of his opera was suggested by the art of this great clown.” In cert in the new Bridgewater Hall in Manchester. adventure—he has created personal sounds and Le Rossignol (“The Nightingale”), Stravinsky 1930, Stravinsky transformed a phrase from this His opera Powder Her Face, based on the story forms while generously and gratefully embrac- sketched a tiny piece for string quartet, his Piece into the subject for the instrumental fugue of the uninhibited Duchess of Argyll, created an ing sonic and technical inspiration suggested first composition for chamber ensemble, in in the Symphony of Psalms. The opening Dance, international sensation when it was premiered by masters from Couperin and Mussorgsky to the style of a Russian folk dance. Ever since while more conventional in its folk-based idiom, at the Cheltenham Festival in 1995, and it has Ligeti and Kurtág.... The old basics are freshly he had taken the musical world by storm with was also prophetic of several important Russia- since been heard in London, Berkeley, Aspen, heard and ordered: the clash or consonance of his Rite of Spring the year before, his creative inspired works of the following years, notably Magdeburg (New York), Helsinki, Brisbane and note against note; the force of an intervallic leap; work had been closely monitored, and even The Soldier’s Tale and Les Noces. The third Piece Aldeburgh. In 1997, Adès was appointed Britten ticking time against time disordered; tradition- this little morceau for quartet did not escape (later titled Canticle) is a solemn processional Professor of Composition at the Royal Academy al timbres invaded and challenged by strange notice. Alfred Pochon, second violinist of the evocative of ancient Church rites whose almost of Music; he has also served as Artistic Director sounds never made before.... Thomas Adès is the Flonzaley Quartet, wrote to the composer ask- static harmonic motion Stravinsky used in Mass, of the Aldeburgh Festival and Music Director of bright new star of British music.” ing about the veracity of the Parisian rumor that Symphonies of Wind Instruments, Symphony of the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group. The mazurka originated sometime during he had just written a “Scherzo” for quartet, and Psalms and other compositions to create a sense He was Resident Composer with the Los the 17th century in Frédéric Chopin’s home expressed an interest in taking such a piece on of suspended time and rapt ecstasy. Angeles Philharmonic from 2005 to 2007, and district of Mazovia, in central Poland. Rather the Quartet’s American tour the following year. held the Richard and Barbara Debs Composer a family of related musical forms than a single The composer’s friend and champion the con- Chair at Carnegie Hall in 2007–2008. He set type, the mazurka could be sung or danced, ductor Ernest Ansermet was assigned the task of Thomas Adès (b. 1971) is also active as a pianist and conductor, with performed fast or languidly and, when danced, negotiating the commission with the Flonzaley Mazurkas for Piano, Op. 27 many concert and broadcast performances in given many variations on the few basic steps (the score was dedicated to him in apprecia- Europe, America and Japan. Adès’s quickly of the pattern. By the 18th and 19th centuries, tion), and Stravinsky added two more short Composed in 2009. Premiered on February 10, accumulating list of distinctions includes the when its popularity spread throughout Europe, movements in July to round out this set of Three 2010, in New York by Emanuel Ax. Paris Rostrum (1994, for Living Toys, judged the mazurka was characterized by its triple me- Pieces for String Quartet. The Flonzaley played the best piece by a composer under 30), 1997 ter, frequent use of unusual scales (often giving the premiere in Chicago on November 8, 1915. Not since the youthful days of Benjamin Royal Philharmonic Society Prize (for Asyla), the music a slightly Oriental quality), variety Stravinsky originally issued the Three Pieces as Britten has a young British composer created Elise L. Stoeger Prize from the Chamber Music of moods and rhythmic syncopations. G. C. pure, abstract music, giving them no titles or such excitement as Thomas Adès. Adès, born in Society of Lincoln Center (1998, for Arcadiana), Ashton Jonson wrote of Chopin’s 56 Mazurkas even tempo markings, but when he arranged London on March 1, 1971, studied piano with Salzburg Easter Festival Prize (1999), Munich in his study of the composer’s piano works, “In them as the first three of the Four Studies for Paul Berkowitz and composition with Robert Ernst von Siemens Prize for Young Composers his hands, the mazurka ceased to be an actual Orchestra in 1914–1918, he called them Dance, Saxton at the Guildhall School of Music before (1999), a 1999 Mercury Prize nomination (for the dance tune, and became a tone poem, a mir- Eccentric and Canticle. first coming to notice when he won the Second recording of Asyla on EMI), 2000 Grawemeyer ror of moods, an epitome of human emotions, The small scale of the Three Pieces belies the Piano Prize in the BBC Young Musician of Prize (for Asyla, the youngest composer to re- joy and sadness, love and hate, tenderness and crucial juncture that they occupy in Stravinsky’s the Year Competition in 1989. That same year ceive that prestigious award, the largest interna- defiance, coquetry and passion.” Thomas Adès stylistic evolution, since they were his first works he entered King’s College, Cambridge, where tional prize for composition, since its inception took up the genre in his Mazurkas for Piano to move away from the opulence and enormous his principal teachers included Hugh Wood, in 1985), and an honorary doctorate from the of 2009, composed on a joint commission performing forces of the early ballets toward Alexander Goehr and Robin Holloway, and he University of Essex (2004); in November 2010, from the Barbican Centre (London), Carnegie the economical, emotionally detached “Neo- began establishing his reputation as a composer he was named Musical America’s “Composer of Hall (New York), Los Angeles Philharmonic Classical” language of his later works. This when the BBC Philharmonic under Mathias the Year.” London’s Barbican Centre staged a Association, San Francisco Symphony and the forward-looking quality is most evident in the Bamert played his Chamber Symphony at retrospective festival of Adès’s work in 2007. His Concertgebouw (Amsterdam). Emanuel Ax, second movement, which is in a brittle, poin- the Cambridge Festival in 1990; he graduated most recent opera, The Tempest, commissioned who gave the work’s premiere in New York City tillistic idiom usually associated with Anton from Cambridge in 1992 with highest honors. by the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, was on February 10, 2010, commented that “these Webern’s compositions, though Stravinsky Other works of sharply defined but greatly greeted with great acclaim upon its premiere in three pieces are inspired by various Chopin ma- claimed that he knew none of that composer’s varied character quickly brought Adès to wide London in February 2004; the work received its zurkas. Each contains three or four different 8 CAL PERFORMANCES CAL PERFORMANCES 9 PROGRAM NOTES PROGRAM NOTES elements that may be recognizable by listeners, Adès Franz Liszt (1811–1886) and images: “I saw on earth figures of angelic or may not. They obviously don’t sound like Arcadiana for String Quartet Petrarch Sonnet No. 123 from Années de grace…no leaf stirred on the bough, and all was Chopin, but they do sound like mazurkas.