130th Anniversary Ad November 1 - December 31, 2012 An die Musik The Schubert Club • Saint Paul, Minnesota • schubert.org Photo: Natasha D’Schommer Photo: Natasha schubert.org 1 schubert.org 3 An die Musik November 1 – December 31, 2012 The Schubert Club • Saint Paul, Minnesota • schubert.org Dear Friends, As the days get shorter and we approach the holidays, music plays a special role in our lives. Several upcoming programs relate overtly to the season. Our Music in the Park Series program, “A Baroque Christmas,” features the Table of Contents Aulos Ensemble with Dominique Labelle, and we unveil The Schubert Club Carolers singing carols by Minnesota 9 The Schubert Club Officers, Board of Directors composers at our December 20th free Courtroom Concert. and Staff We are fortunate to feature a number of excellent 10 Hill House Chamber Players Minnesota-based ensembles over the next two months. The ever-popular Hill House Chamber Players give the 12 Stephen Hough fi rst of their six concerts on November 19th and the string ensemble Accordo continues its series at Christ Church 18 The Aulos Ensemble with Dominique Labelle Lutheran in Minneapolis with a tribute to Claude Debussy. In addition to these regular collaborators, we welcome 26 Calendar of Events Belladonna with Maria Jette at Sundin Hall in a feast of early music, song and poetry, pipa virtuoso Gao Hong with her Carleton College Chinese Music Ensemble at our Landmark 28 Accordo Center Cocktails with Culture program on November 8th, and the talented Ensemble 61 performing a program of 30 Belladonna Minnesota composers in our November 15th Courtroom Concert in Landmark Center. 34 The Schubert Club Museum: Letter from Beethoven And for our November International Artist Series concert at 35 Courtroom Concerts Ordway Center, what a thrill it is to welcome British pianist Stephen Hough at his fi rst Schubert Club recital. Stephen’s 39 An Interview with Thelma Hunter many appearances with the Minnesota Orchestra have made him a favorite in the Twin Cities and a musician I 42 The Schubert Club Annual Contributors: personally have admired for many years. Thank you for your generosity and support On behalf of all the team at The Schubert Club, I wish you a happy, harmonious and peaceful Holiday season. Turning back unneeded tickets: If you know you will be unable to attend a performance, please notify our box office as soon as possible by calling 651.292.3268 or schubert.org/turnback. Donating your unneeded tickets entitles you to a tax-deductible contribution for the face value of the tickets. Turnbacks must be received one hour prior to the Barry Kempton performance. Thank you for your contribution! Artistic and Executive Director The Schubert Club Box Offi ce: 651.292.3268 schubert.org 5 130th Anniversary “The greatness of music speaks for itself when Jessye Norman sings,’’ —The Washington Post Jessye Norman, soprano Photo: Carol Friedman Celebratory 130th Anniversary Concert April 30, 2013 • 7:30 PM • Ordway Center schubert.org • 651.292.3268 Tickets still available 6 THE SCHUBERT CLUB An die Musik schubert.org 7 The Schubert Club Officers, Board of Directors and Staff Offi cers President: Lucy Rosenberry Jones President-Elect: Nina Archabal Vice President Marketing and Development: Jill Thompson Vice President Artistic: Nina Archabal Vice President Museum: Ford Nicholson Vice President Audit and Compliance: Richard King Vice President Nominating and Governance: David Ranheim Vice President Education: Marilyn Dan Recording Secretary: Catherine Furry Vice President Finance and Investment: Michael Wright Assistant Recording Secretary: Arlene Didier Board of Directors Craig Aase James Callahan Michael Georgieff Peter Myers Jill Thompson Mahfuza Ali Carolyn Collins Jill Harmon Ford Nicholson Anthony Thein Mark Anema Marilyn Dan Anne Hunter Gerald Nolte John Treacy Nina Archabal Arlene Didier Lucy Rosenberry Jones David Ranheim Michael Wright Paul Aslanian Anna Marie Ettel Richard King Ann Schulte Matt Zumwalt Lynne Beck Richard Evidon Kyle Kossol Gloria Sewell Dorothea Burns Catherine Furry Sylvia McCallister Kim A. Severson The Schubert Club Staff Barry Kempton, Artistic & Executive Director Joanna Kirby, Project CHEER Director, Martin Luther King Center Max Carlson, Program Assistant David Morrison, Museum Associate & Graphics Manager Kate Cooper, Education & Museum Manager Paul D. Olson, Director of Development Kate Eastwood, Executive Assistant Tessa Retterath Jones, Marketing & Audience Development Manager Amy Fox, Social Media & Audience Development Intern Kathy Wells, Controller Julie Himmelstrup, Artistic Director, Music in the Park Series Composers in Residence: Abbie Betinis, Edie Hill The Schubert Club Museum Interpretive Guides: Amy Fox, Dana Harper, Paul Johnson, Alan Kolderie, Sherry Ladig, Edna Rask-Erickson The Schubert Club is a fi scal year 2012 recipient of a general operating grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. This activity is funded, in part, by the Minnesota arts and cultural heritage fund as appropriated by the Minnesota State Legislature with money from the Legacy Amendment vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4, 2008. KATE NORDSTRUM PROJECTS The Schubert Club is a proud member of The Arts Partnership with The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Minnesota Opera and Ordway Center for the Performing Arts schubert.org 9 The Schubert Club and The Minnesota Historical Society present Hill House Chamber Players Julie Ayer, violin • Catherine Schubilske, violin • Thomas Turner, viola Tanya Remenikova, cello • Jeffrey Van, guitar Guest artists: Adriana Zabala, mezzo-soprano • Ivan Konev, piano Program A Ring of Birds Jeffrey Van (b. 1941) “The Hermit Thrush” “Three Little Birds in a Row” “Little Birds of the Night” “To a Skylark” “The Owl” “The Young Crows” Sonata for Violin and Piano Leoš Janácˇek (1854–1928) Con moto Ballada. Con moto Allegretto Adagio Intermission Piano Quartet No. 2 in E-fl at major, Opus 87 Antonín Dvorˇák (1841–1904) Allegro con fuoco Lento Allegro moderato, grazioso Finale. Allegro, ma non troppo Please turn off all electronic devices. 10 THE SCHUBERT CLUB An die Musik Hill House Chamber Players Monday, November 19 and Monday, November 26, 2012 • 7:30 PM James J. Hill House Jeffrey Van’s song cycle A Ring of Birds opens this Hill House began to notate “speech melodies,” everyday speech infl ected concert on an avian theme. As a guitarist, Van has premiered by mood and situation. “Sounds, the intonation of human over 50 works, among them fi ve concertos and Argento’s Letters speech, indeed of every living being, have always had for me from Composers. He has also composed music for chorus, vocal the deepest truth,” he said. Speech-melody and an irrepressible solo, organ, and many guitar chamber works. A Ring of Birds vitality are at the heart of Janácˇek’s singular musical language. received its premiere at the 2009 Schubert Club Signature Song Late-bloomers, take heart. Janácˇek had to wait until he was 50 Festival by tonight’s performers. Van describes the work: for his fi rst signifi cant premiere—of the opera Jenu˚fa. When I sought to create a musical atmosphere which would refl ect the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated in June contrasts in character and actions of each of the various birds as 1914, Janácˇek was a sexagenarian, respected as a composer, they are depicted by the poets. The range of mood and activity teacher and folklorist, but with a provincial reputation. His is wide: the shy and hidden hermit thrush, fi lling the night with private response to “the shot heard round the world” was the solitary song; three little birds mocking a man’s attempt to sing; Violin Sonata, sketched that summer as war threatened and little birds of the night recounting their wide travels and vast the Russian army was marching from the east. A Russophile, experience; the skylark, soaring upward while pouring a fl ood Janácˇek nursed hopes that the Russians would deliver Moravia of harmony upon the world; the owl, musing alone in his belfry, from its long servitude to Austria-Hungary. The Sonata would while the bustle of human life carries on below; and fi nally, the be a poetic souvenir of his disappointment. noisy crows, teaching their young to fl y in the rose-gold light of Roused by a cryptic utterance from the violin, the piano shakes early morning. and shimmers like the Hungarian dulcimer called cimbalom. Dvorˇák and Janácˇek shared more than Czech heritage. They The haunting Ballada soothes like a lullaby from legendary were both aspiring opera composers, both prized the songs of times. Some suggest that the violin’s fi rst comments in the last their people, and above all, they both loved nature. Dvorˇák was movement evoke distant guns—muted, but feroce, espressivo. fond of pigeons; Janácˇek kept hens. The elder Dvorˇák was born Indeed, the bracing tremolando passage that caps the movement near Prague in Bohemia, the western part of what is now the represented for Janácˇek the Russian armies entering Hungary. Czech Republic. Janácˇek hailed from Moravia, the eastern part, What role does the piano play in a piano quartet? First among and lived much of his life in Brno. The two met in the mid- equals? A stand-in for the fi rst violin? A contrasting force to 1870s, stepping out together on a walking tour of Bohemia in the strings? Dvorˇák‘s Piano Quartet in E-fl at is his second work 1877. “Do you know what it’s like when someone takes your for the medium. It was composed in the summer of 1889, words out of your mouth before you speak them?” Janácˇek just before the Eighth Symphony and several years before his remembered. “This is how I always felt in Dvorˇák’s company. three-year sojourn in the U.S. Here, the piano provides a foil He has taken his melodies from my heart.” From 1897, Janácˇek to a marching string theme.