CMSLC2 Program Notes FINAL

Geisinger is the 2020 Up Close and Virtual season sponsor. Contributions from the members of the Center for the Performing Arts and a grant from the University Park Student Fee Board make this program free of charge. Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Front Row: National Summer Evenings III The presentation runs approximately 1 hour and 13 minutes and will be available for streaming from 7:30 p.m. Thursday, October 22–7:30 p.m. Monday, October 26. Each piece will be introduced by organization Co-Artistic Directors David Finckel and Wu Han. Musicians Ani Kavafian, Tara Helen O’Connor, and Paul Huang will engage in a discussion with Finckel and Wu after each performance. PROGRAM CHAMBER MUSIC SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTER Front Row: National Summer Evenings III Sonata di concerto a 7 for Trumpet, Two Violins, Two Violas, Cello, and Continuo …………………….. Tomaso Albinoni Allegro con brio Adagio—Allegro—Adagio Allegro Featuring David Washburn, trumpet; Ani Kavafian, violin; Giora Schmidt, violin; Mark Holloway, viola; Richard O’Neill, viola; Mihai Marica, cello; Stéphane Logerot, bass; and Kenneth Weiss, harpsichord Quartet in D Major for Flute, Violin, Viola, and Cello, K. 285 ……………………………. WolfganG Amadeus Mozart Allegro Adagio Rondo Featuring Tara Helen O’Connor, flute; Benjamin Beilman, violin; Richard O’Neill, viola; and Keith Robinson, cello Trio in C minor for Piano, Violin, and Cello, Op. 101 ….. Johannes Brahms Allegro energico Presto non assai Andante grazioso Allegro molto Featuring Michael Brown, piano; Paul Huang, violin; and Dmitri Atapine, cello PROGRAM NOTES Tomaso Albinoni (Born 1671 and died in 1751 in Venice, Italy) Sonata di concerto a 7 for Trumpet, Two Violins, Two Violas, Cello, and Continuo Venetian composer Tomaso Albinoni composed his first opera, Zenobia, regina de’ Palmireni, at the age of 23. He found his calling writing opera and went on to compose as many as eighty of them, though he’s best known today for his instrumental works. This piece isn’t from one of his many published collections of instrumental music; rather, it’s the opening sinfonia from Zenobia. At the start of the opera, Queen Zenobia, ruler of the people of Palmyra (in present day Syria), has just been defeated by Roman Emperor Aurelian. Aurelian plans to kill her but, after a number of twists and turns, he ultimately allows her to return once again as queen. This overture is appropriately war- like and tumultuous. Though it’s only five minutes long, it covers a full range of emotions to foreshadow the drama of the opera. In 1958, musicologist Remo Giazotto published an adagio based on an Albinoni fragment he claimed he discovered. The work was performed widely and included in several films, including Flashdance from 1983. Given that Giazotto never revealed his source material, he probably composed the piece himself. It did spark something of a revival of Albinoni’s real music and probably increased sales of Giazotto’s biography of the composer. WolfganG Amadeus Mozart (Born 1756 in SalzburG, Austria; died 1791 in Vienna, Austria) Quartet in D Major for Flute, Violin, Viola, and Cello, K. 285 In winter 1777–78, Mozart was trying to escape his hometown of Salzburg. He visited Mannheim to try to get a permanent job at the court of the elector but was unsuccessful. While there, however, he received a commission from an amateur flutist named Ferdinand Dejean, a rich doctor for the Dutch East Indian Company. Dejean asked for three flute concertos and an unknown number of flute quartets. Mozart worked on the pieces until he left Mannheim in February 1778, when he told his father in a letter that he had completed three quartets. It was long thought that the three flute quartets were those in D Major (K. 285), G Major (K. 285a), and C Major (K. 285b). However, as he received less than half the original fee, and he tended to tell his demanding father what he wanted to hear, it’s more likely that Mozart was exaggerating, and he only completed one or two quartets. Manuscript evidence only exists for this one. The flute was an aristocratic instrument in Mozart’s time. The famous flutist Frederick the Great ruled Prussia and, through his generous music patronage, significantly expanded the repertoire during the late Baroque and early Classical periods. Perhaps for that reason, this quartet looks back to the mid-century galant style, with crystal-clear textures and poised, cheerful melodies. The flute leads throughout, opening the first movement with a delicate melody before a short but interesting development section. The second movement is a stunning flute melody over a plucked accompaniment in the strings. It leads directly to the rondo finale, combining new style in an old form to close this wholly graceful work. Johannes Brahms (Born 1833 in Hamburg, Germany; died 1897 Vienna, Austria) Trio in C minor for Piano, Violin, and Cello, Op. 101 Brahms composed his third and final piano trio in the stormy key of C minor, yet nothing about its genesis suggests a struggle, either personally or creatively. He agonized over his two previous piano trios, but this one seems to have come naturally. He wrote it in the summer of 1886, during a working vacation at the Swiss resort town of Hofstetten. He was very productive that summer—he also composed his Second Violin Sonata and Second Cello Sonata—and he seems to have composed the trio easily with no signs of major revisions or rewrites. He premiered it on December 20, 1886, with violinist Jenő Hubay and cellist David Popper in Budapest. It was published the following year. The trio, composed at the height of Brahms’ career and the peak of the Romantic era, says exactly what it needs to and nothing more. It is the most concise, the most economical, the most self-contained of his piano trios, not to mention the shortest. The majority of the themes and motives can be traced back to the stormy opening gesture. All four movements make constant reference to those opening bars while tonally engaging in a tug of war between C minor and C Major. While C Major wins in the end, it’s a hard-fought victory, not a spontaneous happy ending as would have happened in the Baroque or Classical period. Brahms sets the stage in the first movement, whose sonata form almost resolves in C Major before a decisive coda in C minor brings things back to the home key. After the muted second movement in C minor and a slow movement in C Major, the last movement is again in C minor. This time the sonata form resolves in C minor before the coda brightens for a C Major ending—a neat resolution to this tightly crafted work. Pianist Clara Schumann, Brahms’ friend and mentor, was ill when this piece was composed, but she managed to play through it the following year. She recorded in her diary in June 1887, “What a work it is! Inspired throughout in its passion, its power of thought, its gracefulness, its poetry. No previous work of Johannes has so completely carried me away. How marvelously poetic is the second movement with its swaying rhythm! How happy I was this evening—happier than I had been for a long time.” Program notes by Laura Keller, CMS Editorial Manager © 2020 Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center ABOUT THE ARTISTS Dmitri Atapine has been described as a cellist with “brilliant technical chops” (Gramophone) whose playing is “highly impressive throughout” (The Strad). He has appeared on some of the world’s foremost stages, including Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, the Forbidden City Concert Hall in Beijing, and the National Auditorium of Spain. An avid chamber musician, he frequently performs with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and is an alum of The Bowers Program. He is a recurring guest at leading festivals, including Music@Menlo, La Musica Sarasota, Pacific, Aldeburgh, Aix- en-Provence, and Nevada. His performances have been broadcast nationally in the United States, Europe, and Asia. His many awards include First Prize at the Carlos Prieto Cello Competition, as well as top honors at the Premio Vittorio Gui and Plowman chamber competitions. He has collaborated with distinguished musicians such as Cho- Liang Lin, Paul Neubauer, Ani and Ida Kavafian, Wu Han, Bruno Giuranna, and David Shifrin. His recordings, among them a critically acclaimed world premiere of Lowell Liebermann’s complete works for cello and piano, can be found on the Naxos, Albany, MSR, Urtext Digital, Blue Griffin, and Bridge record labels. He holds a doctorate from Yale School of Music, where he was a student of Aldo Parisot. Atapine is professor of cello and Department of Music chair at the University of Nevada, Reno. He also is the artistic director of Apex Concerts and Ribadesella Chamber Music Festival. Violinist Benjamin Beilman has won praise for his passionate performances and deep, rich tone, which The Washington Post called “mightily impressive” and The New York Times described as “muscular with a glint of violence.” Highlights of his 2018–19 season included play-directing and curating a program with the Vancouver Symphony; making his debut at the Philharmonie in Cologne with Ensemble Resonanz and with the Munich Chamber Orchestra in Koblenz, Germany; performing Four Seasons with the Cincinnati Symphony and Richard Egarr; returning to the City of Birmingham Symphony; and debuting with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and Elim Chan. In recital, he was presented by Lincoln Center in New York, Spivey Hall in Atlanta, and the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.. He performed Mozart sonatas at Philadelphia’s Perelman Theater and Carnegie Hall with pianist Jeremy Denk.

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