Program Details

Versatile and vibrant, the musicians of WindSync “play many idioms authoritatively, elegantly, with adroit technique, and with great fun” (All About the Arts), showing off the uniquely wide-ranging sounds of the wind quintet. WindSync’s charismatic and personal performance style, combined with a three-pronged mission of artistry, education, and community-building, lends the group its reputation as “virtuosos who are also wonderful people, too” (Alison Young, Classical MPR).

Highlights of WindSync’s 2024-25 season include a weeklong residency at Ravinia’s Bennett Gordon Hall series, Chicago; a weeklong residency at Shelter Island Friends of Music, New York; performances at Corpus Christi Chamber Music Society with pianist Jon Kimura Parker; Harvard Musical Association, Cambridge, MA; Chamber Music Kelowna, British Columbia; and a return to Chamber Music Northwest and Emerald City Music, in Seattle and Portland. The group celebrated its 15th anniversary season in 2023-24.

WindSync has enjoyed an international touring career since winning the 2012 Concert Artists Guild Victor Elmaleh Competition and the 2016 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition.

The group has regularly appeared on notable stages throughout the United States and abroad, including Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, the Library of Congress, Ravinia, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Phoenix Chamber Music Society, Rockport Music, and Emerald City Music. Building a new repertoire, WindSync’s recent premieres include works by Viet Cuong, Marc Mellits, Ivan Trevino, Mason Bynes, Nathalie Joachim, and Pulitzer finalist Michael Gilbertson.

WindSync has also served in residencies with the Grand Teton Music Festival, Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival, and the Lied Center, and they work with local partners to craft musical events for cities out of range of large arts organizations. Winner of the 2022 Fischoff Ann Divine Educator Award, the ensemble regularly coaches at training programs nationwide, collaborates with youth orchestras, and performs for thousands of young people each year.

On the heels of “All Worlds, All Times,” WindSync’s 2022 release that “will make you want to get up and dance” (The Whole Note), the quintet’s second commercial album, recorded with composer Miguel del Aguila at Abbey Road Studios, debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Traditional Classical Albums chart in 2024.

Philip Glass is widely regarded as one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century. His family’s record store influenced his early listening as much as did conservatory-style training at Peabody, the University of Chicago, and Juilliard. His career has similarly bridged several worlds, including the founding of the Philip Glass Ensemble, high-profile opera and film commissions, and jobs as a crane operator and a taxi driver.

From 1964-1966, Glass studied harmony and counterpoint with Nadia Boulanger, and in his autobiography, he writes, “I have not written a note of music that wasn’t influenced by her.” Glass’s interest in composing etudes calls back to the intensive training he received in Paris, building musical skills from the ground up.

The 20 etudes for piano were composed between 1991 and 2012, all in characteristic style with repetitive structures. Glass composed the first ten etudes (Book 1) to explore varied tempi, textures, and piano techniques, and as a way to improve his own piano playing. Glass describes the following ten etudes (Book 2) as “a series of new adventures in harmony and structure.” Etude No. 17, taken from Book 2, was commissioned for the 25th Anniversary of the Menil Collection in Houston, Texas, and premiered in 2012.

— Etude #17 by Philip Glass 2012 Dunvagen Music Publishers Inc. Used by Permission

A towering figure of twentieth century music, Nadia Boulanger was born in 1887 to a family of musicians and entered the Paris Conservatoire at the remarkable age of nine, where she and her sister Lili stood among Gabriel Fauré’s most promising students. Lili’s untimely death in 1918 caused Nadia to abandon composing in favor of teaching composition to the next generation of musicians. The career shift, while tragic in origin, ultimately earned Boulanger cult-like status. Composer Ned Rorem described her as the “greatest teacher since Socrates,” and her influence was particularly acute on American music, with the likes of Aaron Copland, Elliott Carter, Quincy Jones, and Philip Glass citing her as an important influence. While brief and self-critical, Boulanger’s compositional period yielded works that could serve as master classes in and of themselves for their rigor and harmonic interest.

Boulanger’s Trois Pièces were composed for organ over a number of years, but they are best known in a version for cello and piano published in 1914. Folk-like melodies and old-style counterpoint filter through modes and harmonies associated with French “Impressionist” composers like Fauré and Debussy. Rather than feature a single solo instrument, WindSync’s adaptation is scored for a more organ-like mixture of instrumental colors.

— Kara LaMoure

RISE, a composition for wind quintet, serves as a musical narrative that highlights the enduring issue of racial injustice. Comprising three distinct movements, this piece engages the listener in an intentional exploration of social consciousness. It underscores the importance of sowing seeds of justice and hope, a yearning for deep-rooted and lasting harmony, and a call to let our inner light pursue justice.

Movement I: Seeds
In this dynamic opening movement, the wind quintet engages in an earnest dialogue, symbolizing the urgency and desire to sow the seeds of change in hopes that the harvest would consist of transformed hearts. The musical interplay at times takes on an aggressive tone, representing our determination and agency in addressing injustice.

Movement II: Deep Harmony
This movement explores rich harmonies, creating a soundscape that envisions a world where unity among people of all backgrounds is not only commonplace but fervently embraced. Amid these harmonies, a sweet melody, a poignant song without words, weaves through, encapsulates the longing for grace and peace, celebrating the profound beauty found in embracing our differences and living in harmony.

Movement III: Spark!
The idea that a single spark can cause a lasting flame serves as the inspiration for this movement. This spirited movement serves as a call to action. The early 20-century African American song This Little Light of Mine is abstractly referenced in this movement, musically igniting the notion that our actions, no matter how small, can affect musical change.

— Shawn Okpebholo

These three tunes are adapted from the versions performed by the Swedish trio Väsen, consisting of Olov Johansson, nyckelharpa, Mikael Marin, viola, and Roger Tallroth, guitar. In the Väsen style, each tune is presented with a traditional form and melody but a contemporary approach to harmony and meter. They were created in response to the 300th anniversary of Carl Linnæus, the noted Swedish botanist and father of taxonomy.

Carl Linnæus Polones was originally composed in 1738 by Gabriel Hoök, the brother-in-law of Linnæus, as a thank-you for settling some gambling debt.

The Tiliandermenuetter, in minuet form, was discovered in the crank organ at the Linnæus family home upon its restoration. The piece comes from a set of dances collected by Sven Tiliander, a relative of Carl’s father Nils Linnæus, and is thought to date back to 1695.

Botanisten is a contemporary polska written by Mikael Marin in honor of American botanist Mark Walstrom, a friend and supporter of Väsen’s exploration into the music of the Linnæus family.

— Kara LaMoure

As a child I was a standard grade explorer, catching bugs and traipsing around in the yard of our suburban Georgia home. But, somewhere along the way, I developed a fear of insects and a dislike for dirt. At the start of adolescence, I became a decidedly indoor kid. This remained true for many years, until as an adult I returned to Georgia and rented a home with a yard to take care of. Like so many people during the pandemic, I became a gardener. I shed some of that aversion to worms, got back in the dirt, and came to love tending to our little patch of earth. It also served to make me more aware of all the plant life around me, wild and otherwise. When life brought me from the lush environs of the southeast to the deserts of the southwest, I didn’t leave behind my interest in the flora. This piece, commissioned by Chamber Music Tulsa for WindSync, features three musical vignettes dedicated to some of the plants that make it work here in the Mojave, my home.

Century Plant
The American agave can live for decades, giving birth to “pups” that share its wide and spiny leaves. In a brief and bittersweet finale, it sends up a magnificent, towering flower stalk before withering.   

The Governess
Larrea Tridentata, or creosote bushes, are ubiquitous in the Mojave, with one stand of bushes said to be nearly twelve thousand years old.  Having stood watch in the desert for so long, it’s no wonder it’s called “gobernadora” in Mexico. Its perfume, drawn forth by the monsoons, is the smell of desert rain.

Joshua Tree
An emblem of the Mojave. This contorted, wooly looking native tree has its own national park, but also peppers the highways of the Las Vegas Valley and my commute. It’s world famous, yet still one of the locals.

— Viet Cuong

Tara Helen O’Connor, who Art Mag has said “so embodies perfection on the flute that you’ll forget she is human,” is an Avery Fisher Career Grant recipient, a two-time Grammy Award nominee, and, as a member of the New Millennium Ensemble, a recipient of the Walter W. Naumburg Chamber Music Award. A Wm.S. Haynes artist, she was the first flutist selected to participate in the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Bowers Program and is currently a season artist of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and a member of the Windscape woodwind quintet.

O’Connor serves as Visiting Associate Professor, Adjunct, of Flute at the Yale School of Music, and is Artistic Director of the Music from Angel Fire Festival. A champion of contemporary music, Ms. O’Connor has premiered hundreds of works and has appeared on numerous recordings and film and television soundtracks including Barbie, Respect, The Joker, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Only Murder in the Building and Schmigadoon! to name only a few.

An avid chamber musician, O’Connor regularly appears include the Bravo! Vail festival, Chamber Music Northwest, Music@Menlo, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Chamber Music Festival of the Bluegrass, Spoleto Festival USA, the Banff Centre, Rockport Music, Bay Chamber Concerts, Manchester Music Festival, the Great Mountains Music Festival, Chesapeake Chamber Music Festival and Music From Angel Fire.

O’Connor has appeared on A&E’s Breakfast with the Arts and PBS’ Live from Lincoln Center. She has recorded for Deutsche Grammophon, EMI Classics, Koch International, CMS Studio Recordings with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and Bridge Records. She also serves on the faculty at Bard College Conservatory of Music, and the Contemporary Performance Program at Manhattan School of Music.

She lives with her husband, violinist Daniel Phillips and their two miniature dachshunds, Chloé and Ava on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

Ikuma is a highly sought-after oboe and English horn player in the New York metropolitan area. He is a member of Orchestra Lumos in Stamford and the woodwind quintet Windscape. He has played with many of the world’s top orchestras including the New York Philharmonic, Metropolitan Opera, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Orchestre National de France, Mariinsky Theatre 7 Orchestra, Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, and New Japan Philharmonic. He held the oboe/English horn chair and assistant conductor positions in the Tony Award-winning musicals The King and I (2015) and My Fair Lady (2018) at Lincoln Center Theater. He currently holds the oboe/English horn chair and assistant conductor position in the broadway musical Sweeney Todd (2023). Ikuma performed in many summer festivals including Colorado Music Festival, Grand Teton Music Festival, Banff Centre, and Pacific Music Festival. Having previously served on the faculties of Chinese University of Hong Kong and Manhattan School of Music, he is currently Director of Chamber Music of the graduate program of the Orchestra Now (TŌN) and is a woodwind faculty member at Bard Conservatory. Ikuma received his Bachelor of Music degree from the Manhattan School of Music where he was a full-scholarship student of Joseph Robinson, former principal oboist of the New York Philharmonic. He also holds a law degree from Keio University of Tokyo, Japan.

Praised by the New York Times for his “spellbinding” performances and “infectious enthusiasm and panache,” Alan R. Kay is principal clarinetist and a former artistic director of Orpheus Chamber Orchestra as well as principal clarinet of New York’s Riverside Symphony and the Little Orchestra Society. He also appears as principal with the American Symphony and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s. Mr. Kay’s honors include the 2015 Classical Recording Foundation Samuel Sanders Chamber Music Award, the C.D. Jackson Award at Tanglewood, a Presidential Scholars Teacher Recognition Award, Juilliard’s 1980 Competition, and the 1989 Young Concert Artists Award with the sextet Hexagon later featured in the prizewinning documentary film Debut. Mr. Kay is a founding member of Windscape and of Hexagon. Summer festivals include Yellow Barn, Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society, the Bowdoin Festival, and the Netherlands’ Orlando Festival. His innovative programming for the New York Chamber Ensemble was a regular feature of the Cape May Music Festival for 26 years. Mr. Kay has recorded with Hexagon, Windscape, the Sylvan Winds, Orpheus, and numerous other ensembles. His recent solo CD, Max Reger: Music for Clarinet and Piano, on Bridge Records, was released to critical acclaim and featured in the November/December 2016 issue of Fanfare magazine. His arrangements for wind quintet are available from Trevco Music Publishing and International Opus.

Also a conductor, Mr. Kay studied conducting at the Juilliard School with the late Otto-Werner Mueller and has conducted orchestras and chamber ensembles throughout the New York City area. Mr. Kay taught at the Summer Music Academy in Leipzig, Germany in 2004 and currently teaches at Manhattan School of Music, Juilliard, and Stony Brook University, where he serves as Executive Director of the Stony Brook Symphony Orchestra. He has served on the juries of the Orlando Festival Piano Trio and Mixed Ensemble International Competitions in Rolduc, Holland; the International Chamber Music Competition in Trapani, Italy; Young Concert Artists International Auditions, Concert Artist Guild Auditions, and the Fischoff Chamber Music Competition.

Bassoonist Gina Cuffari is a dynamic and versatile musician who performs a variety of roles in the New York City area as orchestral musician, chamber musician, soloist, new music advocate, and educator. Praised for having a “sound that is by turns sensuous, lyric and fast moving” (Palm Beach Daily News), Gina is the Bassoonist of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. For eighteen years, she has performed and recorded throughout the USA, Europe and Asia with this prestigious ensemble, and recently finished her tenure as an Artistic Director. Gina is also the Principal Bassoonist of the American Symphony Orchestra, Principal Bassoonist of the Riverside Symphony, and a guest performer with Orchestra of St. Luke’s, The Knights, American Composers Orchestra, and many more. An avid musical theater fan, Gina has performed in Broadway productions of Fiddler on the Roof, Sunset Boulevard, My Fair Lady, Into the Woods and Camelot as a substitute bassoonist.

Gina’s passion for chamber music has led her to collaborate with many outstanding musicians and ensembles over the years. She is a regular guest performer with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, a member of the Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players and Sylvan Winds, and founding member of Trio Cabrini, a clarinet, bassoon/voice, piano ensemble. Favorite guest appearances include making music with the Boston Chamber Music Society, Palm Beach Chamber Music Society, playing in various NYC restaurants with Tertulia, performing with Camerata Pacifica in Santa Barbara, California and making music at the Portland Chamber Music Festival in Maine.

Gina has always had a keen interest in new music, and has endeavored to support composers throughout her career. She has been a longtime collaborator with Alarm Will Sound- performing as bassoonist, vocalist and keyboardist- and has worked with many composers over the years, premiering a plethora of new works with the group. In NYC she has performed with Argento New Music Project, American Modern Ensemble and ACME, and has commissioned and premiered countless works with Sylvan Winds, Quintet of the Americas and Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. In an ongoing personal project, Gina has commissioned solo works that combine her two passions- singing and playing the bassoon- into one performing experience. Composers who have written for her include Jenni Brandon, Gregg August, Sunny Knable and Allison Loggins-Hull.

A passionate educator, Gina joined the faculty of Stony Brook University in Fall 2023 as the Bassoon Professor (Artist-in-Residence) and is an Adjunct Professor of Bassoon at New York University. She is also a frequent guest clinician at Bard College for The Orchestra Now, has taught masterclasses at universities such as Yale and Manhattan School of Music, and has coached chamber orchestras at the National Orchestral Institute + Festival. In a desire to share her unique perspective as a singing woodwind player, Gina presents “Singing Through Your Instrument” workshops/masterclasses at schools throughout the country. During the summers, she teaches and performs at the Mostly Modern Festival in Saratoga Springs, NY and the Bard Summer Festival.

Hailed as “stunning and assured” by the New York Times, Atlanta native David Byrd-Marrow is the Solo hornist of the International Contemporary Ensemble, as well as a member of The Knights. Working with a uniquely wide range of performers, he has premiered works by Anna Webber, Arthur Kampela, George Lewis, Tyshawn Sorey, Anna Thorvaldsdottir, Du Yun, Marcos Balter, Eric Wubbels, Jörg Widmann, Miguel Zenón, and Chick Corea.

David has performed at festivals including the Ojai Music Festival, the Spoleto Music Festival, the Mostly Mozart Festival, the Tanglewood Music Center, Summerfest! at the La Jolla Music Society and as faculty at the Festival Napa Valley. Formerly a member of Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect, he has also made appearances with the New York Philharmonic, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Atlanta, Seattle and Tokyo symphony orchestras, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, the Washington National Opera, the Metropolitan Opera and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. He has recorded on many labels including Tundra, More Is More, Nonesuch, EMI, Deutsche Grammophon, and Naxos.

Mr. Byrd-Marrow received his Bachelor of Music degree from The Juilliard School and Master of Music from Stony Brook University. He is the Associate Professor of Horn at the Oberlin Conservatory.

Red Clay is short work that combines the traditional idea of musical scherzo with living in the South. It references the background of my mother’s side of the family that hails from the Mississippi delta region. From the juke joints and casino boats that line the Mississippi river, to the skin tone of kinfolk in the area: a dark skin that looks like it came directly from the red clay. The solo lines are instilled with personality, meant to capture the listener’s attention as they wail with “bluesy” riffs that are accompanied (‘comped’) by the rest of the ensemble. The result is a virtuosic chamber work that merges classical technique and orchestration with the blues dialect and charm of the south.

— Valerie Coleman

Kurt Weill’s magnum opus may very well be his music for The Threepenny Opera, Bertolt Brecht’s adaptation of John Gay’s 18th-century ballad opera The Beggar’s Opera. The Threepenny Opera premiered in September 1928 and was met with enough favorable reception that within a few months, Weill produced a suite of selections from the opera. The resulting suite, his Kleine Dreigroschenmusik, or Little Threepenny Music, premiered in February 1928, with Otto Klemperer at the helm of the Prussian State Orchestra.

The plot and characters of The Threepenny Opera were largely retained from The Beggar’s Opera. Both satires open with the Peachums discovering that their daughter Polly has married a less-than-virtuous man, known in The Beggar’s Opera as Macheath and in The Threepenny Opera as “Mack the Knife.” The antihero’s happy ending in both libretti provides a sociopolitical commentary by mocking the traditional morality play.

As for the music itself, Weill’s selections reflect the popular styles performed in jazz clubs in Germany the late 1920s. Following the convention of a ballad opera, Weill also references well-known melodies throughout his score.

— Orrin Howard

The music of Pavel Haas belongs to a large body of work by European Jewish composers of the 20th century whose body of work was cut short by death in concentration camps, and surviving works have been pulled out of obscurity only with difficulty and dedication on the part of friends, surviving colleagues, and enterprising publishers. Haas, who died in Auschwitz in 1944, in fact composed some of his best-known music while a prisoner: before being sent to Auschwitz he spent three years in Theresienstadt, a camp permitted to carry on an artistic scene for the eventual purpose of a propaganda film intended to discredit reports of Nazi genocide. In the film, Karel Ančerl conducts Haas’ piece Study for Strings. Ančerl was sent to Auschwitz along with Haas after the completion of the film but survived. He told Haas’ brother that as the two stood next to each other in a line, Haas had a coughing fit and was chosen for death instead of Ančerl as a result. Ančerl reconstructed the lost score of Study for Strings from individual parts that he found from searching Theresienstadt, and eventually emigrated to Canada, where he spent the last four years of his life as music director of the Toronto Symphony.

Although Study for Strings is still one of Haas’ best-known works thanks to Ančerl’s championing, his other works began to come to light significantly after his death and are only beginning their long life in the standard repertoire. One of the musicians responsible for continuing Ančerl’s work on that front was a composition student of Haas’ before the war: Lubomír Peduzzi, a Czech musicologist, composer and poet. His short time as Haas’ student influenced him greatly; Peduzzi later wrote his dissertation on Haas’ wartime music, created the entry on Haas in Grove’s dictionary, and was responsible for the publication and performance of much of his music.

In 1991, Peduzzi created a new edition of Haas’ Wind Quintet. Although the piece had previously been published in 1934, almost all copies of it were lost during the war. He found the manuscript instead in the Moravian Museum in Brno, and his edition introduced Haas’ quintet into the company of a number of significant wind quintets written in the third decade of the 20th century. Haas wrote the wind quintet in 1929, at a time when major composers were beginning to recognize the wind quintet as a vehicle for important works. Carl Nielsen wrote his seminal quintet in 1928, Arnold Schoenberg in 1925, Paul Hindemith in 1925, and Leoš Janáček– who was Haas’ most influential teacher, and Haas his best student– wrote his Mládí (Youth), a wind quintet with an added bass clarinet, in 1924. Haas’ four-movement quintet pays homage to his teacher with its mingled folk songs, synagogue music, and rhythmic complexity that places it firmly in 20th century. Despite its primarily minor mode and the mournful character of its second movement, titled “Prayer,” the final movement ends with a grand and expansive final chord that appears to resolve the uncertainty of the previous themes into triumph.

— Anna Norris

Giuseppe Maria Cambini was born 1746 in the northwestern Italian coastal city of Livorno, but the earliest verifiable information after that places him by the early 1770s in Paris, where he played violin with the Concerts Spirituels, often in performances of his works. His creative specialties were the symphonie concertante (a concerto for a group of soloists) and the string quartet; he turned out at least eighty of the former and nearly 150 of the latter, as well as some 300 other instrumental pieces, many of them published in Paris. Cambini also composed or contributed to fourteen operas, all staged in Paris (though now mostly lost), and was music director at the Théâtre des Beaujolais from 1788 until it closed in 1791. He found a similar post at the Théâtre Louvois when it opened later that year, and also composed patriotic hymns, odes and anthems for the new Republic during that unsettled time. When the Théâtre Louvois came under new management in 1794, Cambini was let go but found work arranging private concerts and composing more than a hundred of his string quartets for the munitions maker Armand Séguin, teaching privately, writing for several journals, editing music publications, and authoring tutors for violin and flute. Cambini’s music, tailored to the earlier French taste for pleasant diversion, faded quickly from popularity after 1795 and his former success vanished. There are few evidences of his last years, including even his death, which is generally thought to have been in 1825 in Paris (in a suburban mental hospital), though one mid-19th-century account says that he settled in Holland, where he died in 1818.

Cambini wrote three quintets for the then-new ensemble of flute, oboe, clarinet, horn and bassoon and published them around 1802. The Quintet No. 3 in F major, as was typical of Cambini, is finely crafted, skillfully orchestrated and melodic throughout. The work opens with a unison summons that introduces the horn’s easy-going main theme; the subsidiary subject begins with a few measures of imitation followed by several ingratiating motives. The development, begun with the unison summons, is brief and leads to another iteration of the summons and a recapitulation of the exposition’s materials. Cambini had finished writing for the stage by the time of this Quintet, and his experience composing for the voice in a dramatic setting is evident in the poignant, lyrical Larghetto. The finale is an infectious rondo with the spirit of a country dance.

— Dr. Jannie Burdeti

Religions are many
But God is one
The lamps may be different
But the Light is the same

Like many people, I spent the last half of 2016 trying to make sense of what was happening in our country and in our world. In my search for texts for my oratorio, This Love Between Us, which I was writing concurrently, I came across these wise words from the 13th century Sufi mystic poet, Rumi. He states so beautifully that, even if our methods for searching for meaning and happiness look very different, the things we seek are so similar.

This piece uses two Hindustani raags: Vachaspati and Yaman. The bhav, the aesthetic of these raags are so different: Vachaspati is dark, brooding, complex and dense. Yaman is light and innocent. And yet, practically speaking, only one note is different between them. The melodies they generate and the way they move makes them feel worlds apart, and yet their notes are almost exactly the same. The piece begins in Vachaspati, in desolate, spare melodic lines. Slowly, as Yaman peeks through the dense harmonies, the two raags begin to weave together into a seamless composite.

— Reena Esmail

Startin Sumthin is a modern take on the genre of Ragtime music.  With an emphasis on ragged! The defining characteristic of Ragtime music is a specific type of syncopation in which melodic accents occur between metrical beats. This results in a melody that seems to be avoiding some metrical beats of the accompaniment by emphasizing notes that either anticipate or follow the beat. The ultimate (and intended) effect on the listener is actually to accentuate the beat, thereby inducing the listener to move to the music. Scott Joplin, the composer/pianist known as the “King of Ragtime”, called the effect “weird and intoxicating.”

— Jeff Scott

Hailed for their outstanding musicianship, the Arianna String Quartet has established itself as one of America’s finest chamber ensembles. Their performances have been praised for “tonal warmth, fastidious balance and expressive vitality” (Chicago Tribune) and “emotional commitment and fluent virtuosity,” (Pretoria News, South Africa).  Formed in 1992, the ASQ garnered national attention by winning the Grand Prize in the Fischoff Chamber Music Competition, First Prize in both the Coleman and Carmel Chamber Music Competitions, and were Laureates in the Bordeaux International String Quartet Competition.

The Arianna Quartet has appeared throughout North America, in South America, Europe, Asia, and South Africa. They have collaborated with many of the world’s most celebrated musicians, including members of the Vermeer, Tokyo, Cleveland and Juilliard Quartets, and their live performances have been heard on National Public Radio’s “Performance Today,” and “Live from Music Mountain”, which broadcasts to 125 stations in the U.S. and to 35 countries. The ASQ has recorded for Albany Records and Urtext Digital Classics, and extensively with Centaur Records.  In addition to their critically acclaimed recording of the two string quartets of Janácek (“These performances of the Arianna String Quartet demonstrate how technical excellence, in alliance with imagination and the human heart, can come to create something truly transcendent.”-Fanfare), the ASQ has also recently completed their recordings of the Complete String Quartets of Beethoven (“I can’t stop listening to these performances. They thrill me, enthrall me, and arouse emotional responses in me of an intensity that can’t be described.”-Fanfare).

The members of the Arianna String Quartet serve on the faculty at the University of Missouri-St. Louis as professors of violin, viola, and cello.  On the UMSL campus, the Arianna Quartet presents their own concert series, and also enriches the academic experience of students outside of the Music Department by visiting classes in physics, business, history, philosophy, art, and language to actively demonstrate the interdisciplinary connections between music and these seemingly disparate disciplines.  The ASQ also presents an interdisciplinary performance and lecture series “First Mondays with the ASQ”, at KWMU, St. Louis Public Radio.  The Arianna Quartet were recipients of the 2022 University of Missouri-St. Louis Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Collaborative Research and Creativity.

For over ten years, the Arianna Quartet has directed the Intensive Quartet Program at the Festival of Music in Santa Catarina, Brazil, working every year with young professional quartets from throughout South America.  Additional highlights for 2022-23 have included concerts throughout the United States, returns to Madeline Island Chamber Music (WI), the Music Mountain Concert Series (CT), the Cedar Valley Chamber Music Festival (IA), and performances at the Jazz and Classics Music Festival in Juneau, as well as concerts in Anchorage and Sitka (AK). 

The Arianna String Quartet also hosts their own summer chamber music festival in St. Louis each June featuring young quartets and students from the US and abroad. More information about the Arianna Chamber Music Festival can be found at ariannacmf.org.

By the time Beethoven turned to writing his six Op.18 string quartets in 1798, he had already written extensively for other genres of chamber music and was well aware of the difficulty of writing for quartet. His piano trios, Op.1, string trios of Op.9 and early
piano sonatas all provided Beethoven with landscapes for experimentation before embarking on what would turn out to be his monumental conquest of the string quartet. Beethoven’s great respect for the quartets by Haydn and Mozart is evident in his earliest quartets. The formality of musical form, symmetry of his melodies and exquisite balance of beauty and drama are tributes to the two great masters that preceded Beethoven. The six Op.18 quartets were completed in 1800 and published in two volumes in 1801.

The first quartet in the Op.18 set, in F Major, was actually the second quartet Beethoven composed, but was situated first in the published set because of his confidence in the quality of the work. The Op.18 No.1 quartet was a piece that Beethoven rewrote,
and there actually exists an entire earlier version of the work from 1799 that he sent to a close friend for review. Upon completing his rewrite in 1800 (the version heard tonight), Beethoven sent a letter to his friend, Karl Amenda, to whom he had sent the first version, saying: “Be sure not to hand on to anybody your quartet, in which I have made some drastic alterations. For only now have I learned to write quartets; and this you will notice, I fancy, when you receive them.”

The sonata form first movement opens with one of the most recognizable motives in the quartet literature, a unison turn shared by all four instruments that begins on the tonic F. The creation of this simple opening motive vexed Beethoven for months, leading
him to sketch nine versions before settling on the version that was finally published. At first, the listener isn’t sure if the mood of the opening motive is serious or whimsical, which may have been Beethoven’s intention. As the movement progresses, we hear every conceivable incarnation of the opening motive, including inversions, as it propels the music through moments of drama, passion and intimacy. A lilting second theme provides an opportunity for each instrument to shine. It is noteworthy how Beethoven uses silence in this movement to create a sense of expectation and uncertainty before offering definitive resolution.

The second movement, believe to be inspired by the tomb scene from Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet”, is the heart of the quartet, where Beethoven gives us some of his most expressive writing. Pulsating eighth notes in the lower three voices lay a
foundation for the lyricism of the first violin’s main melody, as the tragic tone is unveiled. The cello follows with a statement of the primary theme before the texture splinters into meandering lines played by solo voices in the quartet. The second theme, presented by the viola and first violin, offers the first glimpse of optimism, albeit burdened by the inevitability of ultimate loss. The forte version of the opening theme, played by the second violin and viola, is turbulently angry, and is countered by outbursts from the first violin. After a brief coda section, featuring a more agitated version of the opening theme and devastatingly passionate chords, a palpitating viola line and a cascade of notes from the first violin puts the movement to rest.

The third movement is a charming scherzo, and features a gracious melody that is punctuated by Beethoven’s use of unexpected accents. The trio section is more fiery in disposition as a virtuosic running melody in the first violin part is accompanied by heavy
chords in the lower three instruments.

The finale, a Haydn-inspired movement full of wit and contrast, opens with a
capricious line of triplets played by the first violin. A more singing second theme consists
of a dialogue between the first and second violins with a gently rolling accompaniment in
the viola and cello. We are taken on a quick-paced journey full unexpected twists and turns
as Beethoven juxtaposes these elements against one another throughout the movement
before driving to the satisfying conclusion.

-Kurt Baldwin

Joan Tower (b.1938) “Night Fields” for String Quartet (1994) Joan Tower is widely regarded as one of the most important American composers living today. During a career spanning more than 60 years, she has made lasting contributions to musical life in the United States as composer, performer, conductor, and educator. Her works have been commissioned by major ensembles, soloists, and orchestras, including the Emerson, Tokyo, and Muir quartets; soloists Evelyn Glennie, Carol Wincenc, David Shifrin, and John Browning; and the orchestras of Chicago, New York, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, and Washington, D.C., among others.

In 1990, Tower became the first woman to win the prestigious Grawemeyer Award for her composition Silver Ladders. She was the first composer chosen for a Ford Made in America consortium commission of 65 orchestras. The Nashville Symphony and conductor Leonard Slatkin recorded that work, Made in America, with Tambor and Concerto for Orchestra for the Naxos label. The top-selling recording won three 2008 Grammy awards: Best Classical Contemporary Composition, Best Classical Album, and Best Orchestral Performance.

From 1969 to 1984, she was pianist and founding member of the Naumburg Award–winning Da Capo Chamber Players, which commissioned and premiered many of her most popular works. Her first orchestral work, Sequoia, quickly entered the repertory. Tower’s tremendously popular five Fanfares for the Uncommon Woman have been played by over 500 different ensembles. She is currently Asher Edelman Professor of Music at Bard College, where she has taught since 1972.

“Night Fields”, Joan Tower’s first string quartet, is dedicated “with affection and admiration to the Muir Quartet”, which premiered it in February 1994. The work was co-commissioned by Hancher Auditorium at the University of Iowa and by the Snowbird Institute for the Arts and Humanities, and funded in part by Chamber Music America and the Pew Charitable Trusts.

The title, according to Tower, “was conceived after the work was completed and provides an image or setting for some of the moods of the piece: a cold, windy night in a wheat field lit up by a bright, full moon, where waves of fast-moving colors ripple over the fields, occasionally settling on a patch of gold.”

Joan Tower’s music contains attributes that can all be traced back to Ms. Tower’s own personality: bold, clear, honest, expressive, subtle, clever and unpredictable. (It should be noted that having worked with Ms. Tower on several occasions, the Arianna Quartet has also become aware of her fantastic sense of humor!)

“Night Fields” is a three-movement work, with each movement linked to the next without pause. The first movement begins with a unison outburst from the whole quartet. The musical ideas of the first movement grow from this seed, as the viola, then cello, and finally the violins, expound on the simplicity of the opening note. The movement begins almost as a miniature, but quickly introduces energetic and bold strokes. Moments of furiously intense playing pass quickly, and set up the more reflective second movement.

The second movement segues from the first by way of a held interval of a perfect fifth between the violins. This open sound calms the music, allowing the viola to sing effortlessly, and sets a mood of serenity for the movement. Ingenious voice passing and clever pairings of instruments help to keep the music transparent and even fragile at times, and set up the stark contrast that the third movement brings.

A sudden forte outburst announces the start of the third movement as the first violin introduces an energetic syncopated theme that is accompanied by a jagged and unpredictable bass line. The music is fast and erratic, and the impression of “fast-moving colors” is readily apparent by way of Tower’s use of sweeping chromatic runs and a constantly shifting rhythmic meter. Tremolos help to fuel a final charge toward the thrilling coda, and the music gathers momentum as it drives toward the electrifying unison conclusion.

Leoš Janáček’s unlikely path to becoming one of Czechoslovakia’s most heralded composers of the early 20th century is a testimony to his professional tenacity and emotional strength. Having endured several early professional setbacks, namely the 1903 rejection of his now famous opera “Jenufa” by the National Theater in Prague, and the death of his second child that same year, Janáček endured to create his finest and most revolutionary works in the final decade of his life. Janáček’s earliest works were influenced by the traditionally romantic style of his friend and mentor, Antonín Dvořák, whom he met in 1874. But during the 1880s Janáček began what would prove to be an extensive lifelong study of traditional Slovakian and Moravian folk music and developed a style of integrating the rhythm and contours of the Czech language and regional folk music into his own emerging compositional style. The distinctive sound of Janáček’s writing couples his love for folk music with his expanded view of tonality (unexpected notes in traditional chords), unusual use of modality, and unorthodox chordal spacing; the resulting sound is uniquely expressive.

The story behind Janáček’s Quartet No.2, “Intimate Letters”, is a fascinating tale of unrequited love and undying affection. In 1917, while vacationing with his wife, the sixty-three-year-old Janáček met and fell deeply in love with a beautiful young married woman forty years his junior, named Kamila Stösslová. What followed was an eleven-year platonic relationship in which Ms. Stösslová functioned as Janáček’s muse, helping to inspire him to write four operas, two string quartets, a mass, several orchestral works, and most notably, over 700 love letters to her, which fueled the creation of his Quartet No.2. He once wrote to her: “You are there in my compositions, wherever there is pure emotion, sincerity, truth, ardent love…” When Janáček began work on his second quartet, he wrote to Kamila, saying, “Now I’ve begun to write something nice. Our life will be in it. It will be called ‘Love Letters’. There have already been so many of those dear adventures of ours, haven’t there? They’ll be little fires in my soul and they’ll set it ablaze with the most beautiful melodies.” Janáček wrote his second string quartet, eventually changing the name to “Intimate Letters”, in just three weeks during the winter of 1928 and only heard one private performance; he died just five months later.

Throughout the quartet, Janáček follows a somewhat programmatic storyline that depicts four distinct chapters in his relationship with Kamila, and an array of supercharged emotions. The first movement is a depiction of Janáček meeting Kamila. The movement opens with an unsettling trill in the cello and a rhapsodic theme in the violins. The entrance of the viola, which represents the persona of Kamila throughout the piece, is shocking and eerie, as the theme is played with the bow on the bridge of the instrument. This theme recurs several times throughout the movement in various guises. As the movement progresses, Janáček heightens the emotional intensity by presenting soaring melodies that are accompanied by explosive undercurrents in the other instruments, which Janáček said represented Kamila’s disquieting arrival in his life. The beautiful voice of Kamila, heard in the viola, ushers the movement to its exultant end.

The second movement opens with the viola revealing a searching melody meant to represent, as Janáček described to Kamila, “yearning as there at your place, in that heaven of ours.” The movement is built almost entirely on this opening music, but varied masterfully by Janáček’s innovative orchestration of the instruments and unique tonal colors. Before closing the movement, Janáček briefly revisits the theme from the opening of the first movement (a reminder of their first meeting!) and then concludes with a final robust statement of the main theme of the second movement.

The plaintive music of the third movement is meant to represent a “vision of Kamila”. The first violin leads the main theme in a duet with the second violin as the viola and cello play imitative rhythms and supply interesting harmonic colors. Here again, the viola figures prominently in the texture, first answering the violin and then providing an accompanying motive that might represent Kamila’s beating heart. The climax of the movement is obvious, as the first violin plays an irrepressible version of the opening duet theme against tolling chords and jagged arpeggios. The movement ends with two more appearances of Kamila’s beating heart and one final fortissimo outburst.

The final movement is a depiction of Janáček’s “fear” of Kamila, and the role she plays in his life. The music at the opening of the movement sounds like genuine folk music, but is Janáček’s creation. Throughout the movement, furious trills, sudden tempo changes and unforeseen mood swings fuel the “fear” element in the music. The one emotional respite is found in the middle of the movement as Janáček presents a fleeting memory of a dreamy waltz, and perhaps, his final idyllic moment with lovely Kamila. A shocking tremolo chord shatters the moment, perhaps representing Janáček’s moment of realization that his true love is ultimately unattainable. The concluding bars of the quartet are full of tumult and angst, as the first violin’s stunning trills drive the music to its fantastic finish.

(notes by Kurt Baldwin)

The Calidore String Quartet is recognized as one of the world’s foremost interpreters of a vast chamber music repertory, from the cycles of quartets by Beethoven and Mendelssohn to works of celebrated contemporary voices like György Kurtág, Jörg Widmann, and Caroline Shaw. For more than a decade, the Calidore has enjoyed performances and residencies in the world’s major venues and festivals, released multiple critically acclaimed recordings, and won numerous awards. The Los Angeles Times described the musicians as “astonishing,” their playing “shockingly deep,”approaching “the kind of sublimity other quartets spend a lifetime searching.” The New York Times noted the Quartet’s “deep reserves of virtuosity and irrepressible dramatic instinct,” and the Washington Post wrote that “four more individual musicians are unimaginable, yet these speak, breathe, think and feel as one”.

The New York City based Calidore String Quartet has appeared in venues throughout North America, Europe, and Asia including Lincoln Center,Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center, London’s Wigmore Hall, Berlin’s Konzerthaus, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, Brussels’ BOZAR, and at major festivals such as the BBC Proms, Verbier, Ravinia and Music@Menlo. The Quartet has given world premieres of works by Caroline Shaw, Anna Clyne, Gabriela Montero, Sebastian Currier, Han Lash, Mark-Anthony Turnage and Huw Watkins and collaborated with artists such as Anne-Sophie Mutter, Anthony McGill, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Marc-André Hamelin, Joshua Bell, Emerson String Quartet, Gabriela Montero, David Finckel and Wu Han and many more.

Throughout the 24/25 season, the Calidore perform the complete String Quartets of Beethoven at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, at the University of Delaware, and bring the complete cycle to the five boroughs of New York City through the Diamonstein-Spielvogel Initiative for Music and Community Engagement – a newly launched series dedicated to bringing chamber music into diverse neighborhoods and communities across New York City. The quartet also returns to their alma mater, the Colburn School in Los Angeles, to play the complete cycle of Korngold String Quartets. Other highlights of the 24/25 season include return appearances with San Francisco Performances, the Celebrity Series of Boston, the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Spivey Hall in Atlanta, the Warsaw Philharmonic and London’s Wigmore Hall; and premieres and performances of works by Han Lash, Sebastian Currier and Gabriela Montero.

In their most ambitious recording project to date, the Calidore is set to release Beethoven’s complete String Quartets for Signum Records. Volume I, containing the late quartets, was released in 2023 to great critical acclaim, earning the quartet BBC Music Magazine’s Chamber Award in 2024. The magazine’s five-star review noted that the Calidore’s performances “penetrate right to the heart of the music” and “can stand comparison with the best.” Volume II of the cycle comes out in the fall of 2024. Their previous recordings on Signum include Babel with music by Schumann, Shaw and Shostakovich, and Resilience with works by Prokofiev, Janáček, Golijov and Mendelssohn.

Founded at the Colburn School in Los Angeles in 2010, the Calidore String Quartet has won top prizes at major US chamber music competitions, including the Fischoff, Coleman, Chesapeake, and Yellow Springs. The quartet won the $100,000 Grand Prize of the 2016 M-Prize International Chamber Music Competition as well as the Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship. The Calidore has been a BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist and recipients of the Avery Fisher Career Grant and the Lincoln Center Emerging Artist Award.

The Calidore String Quartet serves as the University of Delaware’s Distinguished String Quartet in Residence. They have also served as artist-in-residence at the University of Toronto, University of Michigan and Stony Brook University. The Calidore is grateful to have been mentored by the Emerson Quartet, Quatuor Ébène, Andre Roy, Arnold Steinhardt, David Finckel, Günter Pichler, Guillaume Sutre, Paul Coletti, and Ronald Leonard.

The Calidore String Quartet plays the following instruments:

Jeffrey Myers plays on a violin by Giovanni Battista Guadagnini c. 1775 “Eisenberg,” owned by a private benefactor and bows byDominique Peccatte and Francois Tourte.

Ryan Meehan plays a violin by Vincenzo Panormo c.1775 and a bow by Joseph Henry.

Jeremy Berry plays a viola by Umberto Muschietti c.1903 and a bow by Pierre Simon.

Estelle Choi plays a cello by Charles Jacquot c.1830

Samuel Barber is regarded as one of the great American composers of the 20th century, the first century that produced truly great American classical music. Many of his works across all genres remain solidly in the repertoire. Barber’s musical vocabulary is tonal, lyrical, accessible and distinctively his own. With a gift and a propensity for vocal music that constitutes a good two-thirds of his output, Barber’s music sings, beguiling with its very human voice. This remains true of his eclectic and celebrated chamber works such as the cello sonata, the woodwind quintet “Summer Music”, and the chamber song “Dover Beach” for baritone and string quartet. (Barber himself was an accomplished baritone singer). Barber published two string quartets, an early serenade transcribed for orchestra and the astonishing Op. 11, the later from 1936 when Barber was a mere 26 years old. The centerpiece of the quartet is the famous monolithic and transcendent “Adagio” which has similarly been transcribed as an independent piece for string orchestra and, most revealing, as an a cappella choral mass. Even in the realm of pure instrumental music, Barber keenly evokes the human voice and our everlasting propensity for song.

Barber fiddled with the finale for a number of years. After some amount of frustration, he quickly composed the original third movement for the premier, a rondo in a moderate tempo. Unhappy, he tinkered with movement until he ultimately scrapped it. The revised conclusion became a reprise of the beginning: Barber extracted a portion of the first movement’s conclusion for the new finale and modified the first movement accordingly. The revised quartet therefore takes on a unique composite form. Rather than a three movement work, it is often regarded as a two movement work with the massive adagio rising out of the center of the single, interrupted “outer” movement, a ternary form symmetrically balanced with matching endpapers.

The “Adagio for Strings” has become practically a sacred treasure of American if not international music. Its extraordinary and seemingly universal blend of sorrow, hope and beauty casts such a strong spell that it has been repeatedly called upon to commemorate the most devastating tragedies as the only music worthy of expressing the inexpressible, both the anguish and the hope, the solemnity and the ardent expression, a nearly overwhelming yearning unfulfilled, but acknowledged by some cosmic, spiritual compassion. It is catharsis and redemption delivered in naught but wordless music, simply the sounds of sublime beauty.

It would take a serious poet to properly map the technical aspects of the music to corresponding emotional and psychological experiences. Yet a few observations cast at least a meager light on the mystery. The music is built from long lines set amidst luscious but “chaste” harmonies, pedal points and the community of other likeminded contrapuntal souls. Despite its seemingly melancholy cast, the harmonies frequently radiate with the warm brightness of extended major chords, the “kindness” of the sub-dominant and a sort of magical resolution through sudden modulation. In a way, this long stretch of music rests on a relatively few number of complete cadences spaced apart with great sensitivity and drama. The music line generally moves in a very slow, stepwise fashion, out of time like ancient Gregorian chant. The dominant motion in the line and across episodes is upward, slowly, steadily, unflagging reaching ever higher in three or four major gestures in ever greater lengths until a nearly heavenly peak is gained, the strained and nearly unbearable gesture of unfulfilled longing. Exhausted, shattered and finished, the supplication vanishes into one of the greatest movements of silence in all musical history. The eternal silence is very gently stirred by the opening gesture again, low, soft, calm and soothing. If the yearning is left unfulfilled, it has been fully registered, heard and compassionately acknowledged.

The “other” movement, generally eclipsed by this inexplicable miracle of divinity is engaging and worthy if not nearly so transcendent. It is the polar opposite of its companion. Where the adagio is monothematic, built from impossibly long lines lovingly interwoven into a nearly Renaissance-like meditation of gradual change, continuity and culmination, the first (and last) movement is packed with spiky diversity, a confrontation of colorful contrasts, muscular energy and a distinctively 20th century character. Unlike the ancient, wise grace that seems to run through the adagio, the verve and range of the Molto allegro e appassionato more accurately matches a young, gifted composer exercising his scintillating chops. This is well-crafted music with a “modern” pulse and urgency. But true to Barber’s lifelong commitment to melody, classical form and the advanced tonality of the late Romantic European idiom, the music evinces great lyricism, palpable shape and cogent expression surprising for its time between the two world wars. As time has passed, Barber’s comparative conservatism has found a fresh audience with the contemporary taste for neo-romanticism.

The Austrian, Jewish composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold was arguably one of the very last European Romantics. Born in Vienna just before the turn of the 20th Century, the son of a prominent music critic, Korngold was soon identified as a startling child prodigy and proclaimed the Mozart of a new age. While still very young, his music astonished some of Europe’s finest Avant-garde composer including Mahler, Strauss and Puccini. At only 11 years old, his ballet “The Snowman” became a sensation. His first published opus was sophisticated piano trio from his 12th year. The noted pianist Artur Schnabel championed Korngold’s second piano sonata composed when he was merely 13. One success after another propelled Korngold forward as a composer as well as a conductor of first-rate opera and other stage works as he also managed to become a professor at the Vienna State Academy. A poll taken at the time asked the Viennese public whom they considered to be the most famous composer of the day. The answers were split between Korngold and his older compatriot, Arnold Schoenberg. Yet while Schoenberg was already far along into his own modern, revolutionary twelve-tone music, Korngold remained, for the rest of his life, within the orbit of tonal, Romantic music after the fashion of Mahler and Strauss while nonetheless showcasing his own original voice.

Between the profound influences of Hollywood and World War II, Korngold’s life would undergo an extraordinary twist of fate. Max Reinhardt, Viennese theater producer, impresario and one of Korngold’s colleague established a brilliant career of his own in the American film business and, early on, invited Korngold to the U.S. to compose film scores. A nascent art form within a young but burgeoning industry became a fantastic vehicle for Korngold who became famous all over again as one of the founding fathers of film score composition winning multiple academy awards over the span of some 16 films between 1933-1947. One of them saved his life. On his second trip from Vienna to Los Angeles in 1938, Korngold composed the award-winning score for The Adventures of Robin Hood staring Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland. While engrossed in Hollywood, Hitler annexed Austria, occupied Vienna and ultimately unleashed Kristallnacht. The consequences could have been devastating for him, but Korngold remained safely abroad. He stayed in the U.S., eventually became a citizen, visited Vienna after the war (where sadly, he was no longer acclaimed), and died at home in Los Angeles in 1957 at the age of 60. Not long after his death, Korngold became a small footnote in the history of cinematic music deemed, particularly because of his work in Hollywood, unworthy of mention in any history of more “serious” concert music. With the release of an album of film score highlights by Warner Brothers in 1973, the world rediscovered Korngold and his reputation for both film and abstract concert music has only appreciated. Several of his works are now in the standard repertoire.

Erich Wolfgang KorngoldKorngold’s third and last string quartet dates from 1945, just a few years before he retired from his film career as he returned, in his final years, to composing once again the fine concert music of his youth. It is expertly crafted chamber music in a classic four-movement design with music that is entirely characteristic of Korngold’s musical imagination. As Schubert and Mahler, among others, reused their songs for more elaborate concert works, so Korngold here repurposes music from at least three of his prior film scores. The lyrical middle section (e.g. the “trio”) of the second movement scherzo is from Between Two Worlds. The haunting slow movement (positioned third) is based on a love scene from The Sea Wolf and the lively finale is based on a theme from the film Devotion. The first two movements seem to feel the most “modern” with their chromatic and occasionally dissonant tendencies while the final two movements inhabit exhibit more of the late Romantic style of Korngold’s original pre-war context. Throughout, one senses Korngold’s sensitivity to theme, motive, rhythm, color, texture and dynamics all in the service of compelling dramatic narrative well suited to film scores and abstract concert music alike.

“They are four classical musicians performing with the energy of young rock stars jamming on their guitars, a Beethoven-goes-indie foray into making classical music accessible but also celebrating why it was good in the first place.”  —Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“I don’t believe I’ve ever experienced the radical emotional range of Op. 132’s long, slow movement — with its liberating, dancing interjections — more intensely than when listening to the entirety of Healing Modes.”  —The New York Times

With their gripping performance style and unquenchable appetite for musical adventure, Brooklyn Rider has carved a singular space in the world of string quartets over their fifteen-plus year history. Defining the string quartet as a medium with deep historic roots and endless possibility for invention, they find equal inspiration in musical languages ranging from late Beethoven to Persian classical music to American roots music to the endlessly varied voices of living composers. Claiming no allegiance to either end of the historical spectrum, Brooklyn Rider most comfortably operates within the long arc of the tradition, seeking to illuminate works of the past with fresh insight while coaxing the malleable genre into the future through an inclusive programming vision, deep-rooted collaborations with a wide range of global tradition bearers, and the creation of thoughtful and relevant frames for commissioning projects.  

The upcoming concert season is strongly illustrative of the intrepid musical appetite of Brooklyn Rider. This fall, they began unveiling a major new commissioning and programmatic venture called The Four Elements; an exploration of the four classical elements (earth, air, water, and fire) as metaphor for both the complex inner world of the string quartet and the current health of planet Earth. Featuring new commissions – each based on an element – by Andreia Pinto Correia, Conrad Tao, Dan Trueman, and Akshaya Tucker, this project also features existing works from the repertoire including Shostakovich’s 8th String Quartet, Dutilleux’s Ainsi la nuit, Golijov’s Tenebrae, and American folk music collected by Ruth Crawford, newly arranged by Brooklyn Rider’s own Colin Jacobsen. This winter, the quartet will also release The Wanderer, their first ever live concert recording, made at Paliesius Manor in eastern Lithuania while on tour last spring. The album consists of two works written recently for Brooklyn Rider: Gonzalo Grau’s Aroma a distancia and Osvaldo Golijov’s Um Dia bom. Also featured is Brooklyn Rider’s signature interpretation of Schubert’s iconic “Death and the Maiden” string quartet. This season also sees the quartet reuniting with Magos Herrera across the U.S. for their Dreamers project. Looking further into the future, they will expand work already underway with Syrian clarinetist Kinan Azmah, including the future release of a collaborative album.

The 2021-22 season boasted two unique collaborative ventures: one with Israeli mandolin virtuoso Avi Avital, and the other a brand new phase of work with Swedish mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter, where they explored themes of love and death through the music of Franz Schubert and Rufus Wainwright. Also, 2022’s release of The Stranger (Avie Records) with tenor Nicholas Phan was recently nominated for a 2023 Grammy® award and made numerous best-of lists for 2022, including The New Yorker.

Prior to the global pandemic, the 2019-20 season saw a veritable explosion of new projects and releases. Shared at the height of the US lockdown, the Grammy®-nominated recording Healing Modes (In A Circle Records) presented Beethoven’s towering Opus 132 — the composer’s late testament on healing and the restorative power of new creation — interwoven with five new commissions powerfully exploring topics as wide-ranging as the US-Mexico border conflict, the Syrian refugee crisis, the mental health epidemic, and physical well-being. Described by The New Yorker as a project which “…could not possibly be more relevant or necessary than it is currently,” the composers include Reena Esmail, Gabriela Lena Frank, Matana Roberts, Caroline Shaw, and Du Yun.  

Earlier in the same season saw the release of two projects from vastly different musical spheres. The Butterfly, with the master Irish fiddler Martin Hayes (In A Circle Records), an album which the Irish Times described as “a masterclass in risk-taking,” and the other, Sun On Sand (Nonesuch Records), featuring the music of Patrick Zimmerli with saxophone giant Joshua Redman and fellow collaborators Scott Colley on bass and Satoshi Takeishi, percussion.  

In fall 2018, Brooklyn Rider released Dreamers on Sony Music Masterworks with Mexican jazz vocalist Magos Herrera. Celebrating the power of beauty as a political act, Dreamers amplifies the visionary artistry of Violeta Parra, Federico Garcia Lorca, Gilberto Gil, Joao Gilberto, Octavio Paz, and others, all who dared to dream under repressive regimes. Featuring gems from the Ibero-American songbook in evocative arrangements by Jaques Morelenbaum, Diego Schissi, Gonzalo Grau, Guillermo Klein, and Brooklyn Rider’s own Colin Jacobsen, Dreamers topped numerous charts and garnered a Grammy® nomination for best arrangement (Gonzalo Grau’s “Niña”). Touring widely to support the album, they appeared at venues ranging from New York City’s Jazz at Lincoln Center to Mexico City’s Deco masterpiece, the Palacio de Bellas Artes. 

Brooklyn Rider has remained steadfast in their commitment to generate new music for string quartet at nearly every phase of their history. To kick off the 2017-18 season, Brooklyn Rider released Spontaneous Symbols (In a Circle Records), featuring new commissions by Tyondai Braxton, Evan Ziporyn, Paula Matthusen, Kyle Sanna, and Colin Jacobsen. In the 2015-16 season, the group celebrated its tenth anniversary with the groundbreaking multi-disciplinary project The Brooklyn Rider Almanac, for which it recorded and toured 15 specially commissioned works by musicians from the worlds of folk, jazz, and indie rock, each inspired by a different artistic muse. The Fiction Issue, with singer-songwriter Gabriel Kahane, featured his composition which was premiered in 2012 at Carnegie Hall by Kahane, Brooklyn Rider, and Shara Nova. Additionally, Brooklyn Rider has enjoyed a long-standing relationship with the music of the iconic American composer Philip Glass, which began with 2011’s much-praised recording Brooklyn Rider Plays Philip Glass and continued with two subsequent installments of Glass’s works for string quartet, all released on the composer’s label Orange Mountain Music. 

Numerous other collaborations have helped give rise to NPR Music’s observation that Brooklyn Rider is “recreating the 300-year-old form of string quartet as a vital and creative 21st-century ensemble.” During the 2016-17 season, Brooklyn Rider released an album entitled So Many Things on Naïve Records with Swedish mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter, comprising music by Colin Jacobsen, Caroline Shaw, John Adams, Nico Muhly, Björk, Sting, Kate Bush and Elvis Costello, among others. Some Of A Thousand Words, an evening-length program with choreographer Brian Brooks and former New York City Ballet prima ballerina Wendy Whelan, was an intimate series of duets and solos in which the quartet’s live onstage music is a dynamic and central creative component. Some Of A Thousand Words was featured at the 2016 Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, before two U.S. tours, including a week-long run at New York City’s Joyce Theater. A collaboration with Dance Heginbotham with music written by Colin Jacobsen resulted in Chalk And Soot, an evening-length work presented by Lincoln Center’s White Lights Festival in 2014. Brooklyn Rider has also frequently teamed up with banjoist Béla Fleck, with whom they appeared on two different albums, 2017’s Juno Concerto and 2013’s The Impostor. And in one of their longest-standing musical friendships to date, Brooklyn Rider and Iranian kamancheh player Kayhan Kalhor released the highly praised recording Silent City (World Village) in 2008, still touring the project to this day.  

In addition to being the cellist of the Blair String Quartet, Felix Wang is a founding member of the Blakemore Trio and co-principal cellist of the IRIS Orchestra under the direction of Michael Stern. His diverse career has brought him throughout the world as a chamber musician, soloist, and in recital, receiving critical acclaim for, “beautifully wrought,” “dazzling,” and “soulful” performances.

Wang has been the winner of several esteemed competitions, including the National Society of Arts and Letters Cello Competition, where he appeared with the Phoenix Symphony. Judges included Mstislav Rostropovich, Raya Garbousova and Laszlo Varga.  Frequently invited to perform at festivals, recent engagements include the Portillo International Music Festival, the Tucson Winter Chamber Music Festival, Strings in the Mountains Festival, the Highlands Chamber Music Festival and the Walla Walla Chamber Music Festival. He has been heard live on NPR stations across the country and has recorded for the Albany, Blue Griffin, Centaur, Innova and Naxos labels.

Already established as a well-known pedagogue, Wang is professor of cello at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. During the summer, he is on the faculties of the Chautauqua Music Festival and Madeline Island Chamber Music, and is co-artistic director of the Hilton Head Chamber Music Institute.  In previous summers he has served on the faculties of the Green Mountain Chamber Music Festival, Brevard Music Center, Banff Centre Youth Arts Festival, the Interlochen Center for the Arts, the Rocky Mountain Summer Conservatory, the National Music Festival and the Killington Music Festival.

Wang received a Doctorate of Musical Arts from the University of Michigan, a Master of Music from the New England Conservatory, and a Bachelor of Music from the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University.  Wang was also a recipient of the prestigious Frank Huntington Beebe Grant for study abroad, using it to study in London with William Pleeth. His teachers have included Erling Blondal Bengtsson, Laurence Lesser, Stephen Kates, Jeffrey Solow and Louis Potter Jr.

We have a “short while to be here, and a long time to be gone,” as the lyrics go on the American folk song “Little Birdie.” Astronaut Loren Acton described his experience looking down at our home planet Earth from above: “Looking outward to the blackness of space, sprinkled with the glory of a universe of lights, I saw majesty – but no welcome. Below was a welcoming planet. There, contained in the thin, moving, incredibly fragile shell of the biosphere is everything that is dear to you, all the human drama and comedy. That’s where life is; that’s where all the good stuff is.”

In writing this piece, I was very much inspired by the example of Ruth Crawford Seeger, one of America’s most forward looking composers of the early part of the 20th century. Then her life took a turn in Depression-era America as she and her husband Charles Seeger began a deep investigation of American folk music alongside the Lomax brothers during the FDR years.

She treated folk music with the respect and attention that Béla Bartók had exhibited in a somewhat parallel fashion in Europe, and as an educator became deeply committed to teaching folk songs to children, publishing several collections of American folk songs for children, including the Animal Folk Songs for Children. Ruth also raised four children of her own during that challenging time, several of whom became icons of the folk-revival movement in the generation to come (stepson Pete Seeger, and her own children Peggy and Mike Seeger).

For around twenty years, her personal compositional voice was silent, but in 1952, she wrote one last modernist composition, a wind quintet, before falling ill and eventually succumbing to cancer. I like to imagine what would have happened if she had lived longer and had attempted to further integrate her life’s work – her love of folk music alongside her formal compositional voice. So this piece, representing earth in The Four Elements, is very much an homage to Ruth as well as a joyous celebration of our home planet. This of course includes all animals and children past and present who’ve been here or will be here a short while and then gone for a long time…

— Colin Jacobsen

In September 2018, I developed an infection in my throat that wouldn’t subside. For two weeks, it became increasingly difficult to swallow, to breathe and especially to speak. During this time of intense, painful silence, I thought about what this loss of voice represented for me: of how many times in my life I had been rendered voiceless—either by others or by my own doing. Healing, in this case, was not about enduring the pain, but about releasing the poison I have always swallowed—that didn’t belong to me. It was only when I felt myself begin to release that poisonous energy that I felt the physical infection begin to subside.

This piece was conceived during those dark weeks, and is simply about that release. It uses two incredibly beautiful Hindustani rāgas: the dark and mysterious Todi and the mournful Bhimpalās. While working on this piece, I was also working on a setting of a beautiful Ḥāfiẓ poem which ends “When the violin can forgive / every hurt / caused by others / the heart starts singing.” That is very much the spirit of this piece, too.

Zeher (Poison) generously commissioned for Brooklyn Rider by Judy Evnin. First performance, November 2, 2018 – Tempe, Arizona

From the very first notes of our relationship with the string quartet music of Philip Glass, we felt an affinity to this inimitable musical language. The glowing resonances of his string quartets coaxed us towards a truly collective spirit as an ensemble in our formative years (and continue to do so!). Not only did the music require a total emotional investment, but it also demanded that we proceed with a heightened sensitivity to blend, transparency, and tone color – as if the notation served as a kind of Rosetta Stone which was our job to decode. Beyond the fundamental approach to the score, Glass’ synergistic combination of interlocking patterns and elemental harmonies inevitably caused us to draw connections to our other spheres: whether it be the gossamer-like inner voices of Schubert, the pulsating energy of New York City, or the drone-infused textures pointing to a much wider web of musical traditions. All of this and more cemented a real commitment to this music within our collective experience.

As a quartet, we have always been heavily invested in reaching across musical genres. Philip Glass is an absolute exemplar of this type of musician. His uncanny ability to be simultaneously a composer of our time and curiously ‘unstuck’ from time fosters a shared appreciation of his language across an unusually wide spectrum of musical tastes. Though perhaps most widely known for his dramatic scores to such iconic films as The Hours, Kundun, Mishima, and Koyaanisqatsi, as well as for his operatic works, namely Einstein on the Beach, Satyagraha, and Akhnaten, the string quartets represent some of his most dynamic and personal compositions.

The six inter-connected movements of Philip Glass’s String Quartet No. 3, ‘Mishima’ (1985) were assembled by pulling together material from the composer’s own score to a Paul Schrader film about Yukio Mishima, one of Japan’s most treasured literary figures of the 20th century who committed ritual suicide after a failed coup d’état.

Given Franz Schubert’s undeniable stature in the pantheon of musical luminaries, it is a challenging exercise more than two hundred years later to imagine him as greatly under appreciated within his own lifetime. There was much left to be published of his work upon his death, much of it spread out in the hands of his small social circle in Vienna. He was known in his day as a composer of mere hausmusik; part songs, Lieder, and various pieces for piano. Almost none of his large-scale works were known by the Viennese public, much less outside of Vienna. Schubert himself was not a virtuoso performer – he wrote no concertos, so his cause was not advanced by the popular virtuosos of the era. Italy was all the rage: the incomparable and devilish violinist Paganini was enormously popular, as was the music of Rossini. And so it was left mostly to Schubert and his intimate circle of friends to organize evenings of informal performances comprised mostly of Lieder and part songs with the ink still drying, referred to as Schubertiaden.

It took later figures such as Robert Schumann, who was an extremely prescient observer of the musical landscape, to elevate Schubert’s status to a wider audience. Schumann’s description from an 1840 essay on Schubert’s 9th Symphony for the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik could just as easily apply to this quintet – “And this heavenly length, like a fat novel in four volumes by Jean Paul – never-ending, and if only that the reader may go on creating in the same vein afterwards. How refreshing is their sense of inexhaustible wealth where with others one always fears the ending, troubled by the presentiment of ultimate disappointment.”

Schubert’s Cello Quintet in C Major, a work of the kind of monumental scope Schumann was referring to, follows a series of large-scale works begun around 1824 that marked an important transition in Schubert’s chamber music from the hausmusik-infused works, composed mainly with his family quartet in mind, to works of grand dramatic scope.

This quintet from the fall of 1828 was Schubert’s final completed work (it’s entirely likely that Schubert himself never even heard the work rehearsed). Despite failing health and an impending sense of the end approaching, Schubert nevertheless worked at a feverish pace to produce two monumental piano trios, three epic piano sonatas and the beloved song cycle Winterreise. While we hear in the overall quintet a sense of mortal struggle, peaked emotions, and intense drama, viscerally reflecting Schubert’s deteriorating state of affairs, it is the suspended sense of time that sets this work apart from all others. One of the longest chamber works in the 19th-century repertoire, with many performances clocking in at an hour or more (we will endeavor towards slightly less!), the quintet suggests a suspension of time from its opening chiaroscuro chords, to the Adagio’s heavenly choir of strings, to the seemingly limitless invention and repetition of the final movement’s Viennese-infused themes.

Contributing to a sense of grand scale in this work is the addition of a second cello to the standard string quartet texture, expanding the resonance considerably. And surely the elemental choice of C major as the home key is designed to take full advantage of the expanded low end of the ensemble (with the low strings of the viola and celli tuned to a C), suggesting a boundless, infinite space; a “novel of heavenly length.”

— Nicholas Cords

The Koa String Quartet is composed of violinists Kisa Uradomo (Maui, Hawai’i) and Leah Pernick (Metro Detroit, Michigan), violist Devin Cowan (Long Island, New York), and cellist Heewon Lee (O’ahu, Hawai’i). Koa is the Graduate String Quartet-in-Residence at the University of Colorado Boulder where they were the first prize winners of the 2024 Ekstrand Competition.

Koa is invested in fostering musical engagement with students and presenting high quality classical music for community audiences. In addition to performing classical string quartet repertoire together, Koa also performs diverse repertoire such as film scores, pop covers, and folk music. During their time as a quartet, they have prioritized their goals through their educational residency at Bravo!Vail and their work as the Quartet-in-Residence at the Hana Hou Music Program.

The name “Koa” comes from the tree in the Hawaiian Islands, and the wood symbolizes strength and courage.

Music appears to be an infinitely renewable resource in that the human capability for ever-new musical expression seems inexhaustible. This property is seemingly demonstrable even within the work of certain prodigious composers like Bach or Haydn where, within even a single genre, we are presented with an endless variety of riches. Haydn is famous not only for essentially inventing the string quartet but also for turning out a large number of masterworks in the form, each a unique individual example novel in its own way. Most knowledgeable enthusiasts will agree that Haydn wrote around 30 “great” quartets and yet, without any particularly radical changes, they comfortably fit within a relatively modest range of style and expression. Still, they are testament to Haydn’s endless powers of invention and musical entertainment as he gradually evolved the string quartet from the intimate chamber salon to the public concert hall.

Haydn’s six quartets of 1793 (published in two sets of three as Op. 71 and Op. 74) are regarded as the first string quartets written for the concert-going public rather than the exclusive noble connoisseur. Haydn had just completed his first international “tour” of London where he was celebrated as Europe’s great composer, fêted not only by royalty and nobility, but loudly cheered by the adoring masses in large concert venues. Haydn’s last 14 quartets (comprising Op. 71, 74, 76 and 77) all show a new sense of adventure, virtuosity and extroversion reflecting this more public performance context and the need to project. In some ways more “symphonic” and even “romantic” than their predecessors, these final quartets begin to establish the tradition of mature classical chamber music as the foundation of the modern repertoire.

One new feature found in all six of these quartets is the first movement introduction, a brief fanfare or tutti unison as if to loudly announce the start of the performance. Naturally, these are not mere flourishes, but integral content for the ensuing musical content. In the case of Op. 71, No. 2 in D major, the introduction is a full four-measure adagio theme that becomes the important first subject of the sonata-allegro form. This quartet also unveils another “modern” evolution at least symbolically suggesting the migration from intimate drawing room to concert hall: the quickening of the minuet from Allegretto to Allegro and the dawn of the energetic scherzo.

Often known as the “Apponyi” quartets due to Haydn’s dedication to the Austrian Count Apponyi, these quartets continue to demonstrate Haydn’s evolving sophistication in this high art of Viennese Classicism. He makes use of more adventurous key changes (within and across movements) for dramatic effects. He continues his formal and structural innovations often based on the continuity and variation of a featured motif. And as a hallmark of style, Haydn continues to blend the gallant and learned, homophony melody and polyphonic counterpoint in a fluid admixture based on constant change, a fresh, expressive dynamism that would eventually be regarded as the harbinger of Romanticism.

It was not a matter of casual coincidence that Brahms introduced himself to the Viennese public in 1862 with his first two piano quartets. (Few things just “happened” in the professional life of this most self-critical musician.) Chamber music spans his entire creative output, from the Op. 8 Piano Trio of 1854 to the Op. 120 Clarinet Sonatas 40 years later. Most of it includes the piano, his own instrument, but among the scores that he showed to Robert and Clara Schumann in 1853 were several string quartets. Whether any of that music survived into the two Op. 51 Quartets that he had premiered in 1873 is unknown, but they had clearly been gestating for a long time.

The A-minor Quartet was actually premiered two months before the putative No. 1 of the pair, though both had been sent to Brahms’ publisher at the same time. It is the more expansive and more lyrical of the two, and it is also rich in countrapuntal wonders, particularly canons. Brahms revered Bach, considering the publication of Bach’s complete works, begun in 1850, one of the most important events of his lifetime. The themes of the first movement, for example, are developed largely through polyphonic devices, and the heart-stopping little interludes in the Quasi minuetto movement are double canons. Arnold Schoenberg pointed to the second movement – which has its own vigorous canon – as a model of musical economy, making much out of the reflection and temporal manipulation of a single interval (a 2nd).

Brahms also uses a deeply personal, extra-musical element in the themes of the opening movement. The piece was premiered by the quartet of a good friend, the Hungarian violinist Joseph Joachim, whose motto was “Frei, aber einsam” (Free, but lonely). Brahms countered that with “Frei, aber froh” (Free, but glad), and used the pitches F-A-E and F-A-F prominently. The canon in the second movement has a Hungarian character, as does the flashing dance of the Finale; further links to Joachim. (At this point, it may come as no surprise to hear the Finale’s coda begin as a slow, quiet canon.)

—John Henken

The world-renowned Takács Quartet is now entering its fiftieth anniversary season.

Edward Dusinberre, Harumi Rhodes (violins), Richard O’Neill (viola) and András Fejér (cello) are excited about projects including a new concerto for them and the Colorado Music Festival orchestra by Gabriela Lena Frank. In November the group will release its latest Hyperion project, ‘Flow’ by Nokuthula Ngwenyama. A new album with pianist Marc Andre Hamelin will be released in the spring featuring works by Florence Price and Antonín Dvořák.

The Takács maintains a busy international touring schedule. In 2025 the ensemble will perform in South Korea, Japan and Australia. The Australian tour is centered around a new piece by Cathy Milliken for quartet and narrator. As Associate Artists at London’s Wigmore Hall, the group will present four concerts featuring works by Haydn, Britten, Ngwenyama, Beethoven, Janáček and two performances of Schubert’s cello quintet with Adrian Brendel. During the season the ensemble will play at other prestigious European venues including Barcelona, Budapest, Milan, Basel, Bath Mozartfest and Bern.

The group’s North American engagements include concerts in New York, Vancouver, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Lajolla, Berkeley, Ann Arbor, Chicago, Tucson, Portland and Princeton, and collaborations with pianists Stephen Hough and Jeremy Denk.

The members of the Takács Quartet are Christoffersen Fellows and Artists in Residence at the University of Colorado, Boulder. During the summer months the Takács join the faculty at the Music Academy of the West, running an intensive quartet seminar.

The Takács has recorded for Hyperion since 2005. Their most recent album includes Schubert’s final quartet D887. This and all their other recordings are available to stream at https://www.hyperion-streaming.co.uk In 2021 the Takács won a Presto Music Recording of the Year Award for their recordings of string quartets by Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn, and a Gramophone Award with pianist Garrick Ohlsson for piano quintets by Amy Beach and Elgar. Other releases for Hyperion feature works by Haydn, Schubert, Janáček, Smetana, Debussy and Britten, as well as piano quintets by César Franck and Shostakovich (with Marc-André Hamelin), and viola quintets by Brahms and Dvorák (with Lawrence Power). For their CDs on the Decca/London label, the Quartet has won three Gramophone Awards, a Grammy Award, three Japanese Record Academy Awards, Disc of the Year at the inaugural BBC Music Magazine Awards, and Ensemble Album of the Year at the Classical Brits. Full details of all recordings can be found in the Recordings section of the Quartet’s website.

The Takács Quartet is known for its innovative programming. In 2021-22 the ensemble partnered with bandoneon virtuoso Julien Labro to premiere new works by Clarice Assad and Bryce Dessner, commissioned by Music Accord. In 2014 the Takács performed a program inspired by Philip Roth’s novel Everyman with Meryl Streep at Princeton, and again with her at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto in 2015. They first performed Everyman at Carnegie Hall in 2007 with Philip Seymour Hoffman. They have toured 14 cities with the poet Robert Pinsky, and played regularly with the Hungarian Folk group Muzsikas.

In 2014 the Takács became the first string quartet to be awarded the Wigmore Hall Medal. In 2012, Gramophone announced that the Takács was the first string quartet to be inducted into its Hall of Fame. The ensemble also won the 2011 Award for Chamber Music and Song presented by the Royal Philharmonic Society in London.

The Takács Quartet was formed in 1975 at the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest by Gabor Takács-Nagy, Károly Schranz, Gabor Ormai and András Fejér, while all four were students. The group received international attention in 1977, winning First Prize and the Critics’ Prize at the International String Quartet Competition in Evian, France. The Quartet also won the Gold Medal at the 1978 Portsmouth and Bordeaux Competitions and First Prizes at the Budapest International String Quartet Competition in 1978 and the Bratislava Competition in 1981. The Quartet made its North American debut tour in 1982. Members of the Takács Quartet are the grateful beneficiaries of an instrument loan by the Drake Foundation. We are grateful to be Thomastik-Infeld Artists.

The string quartet according to Haydn was a place for experimentation, discovery, and ultimately, artistic splendor. Like the piano sonata in Beethoven’s career, the quartet for Haydn became a laboratory where new ideas and methods could be tested and the glorious tools of his trade be honed. Again like Beethoven’s sonatas, Haydn’s quartets became the proving ground for his symphonies and the other large forms which were to receive the benefits of his ever-growing mastery.

Haydn began writing string quartets as early as the 1750s, when he was in his twenties. Not surprisingly, inasmuch as the stylistic compass available at the time was an unreliable instrument that sent composers off in different directions, these works demonstrate that the young composer was caught with one ear galvanized by grandiose Baroque swirls, the other enticed by the deliberate plainness and the passionate stirrings of the music of C.P.E. Bach. Was Haydn confused by the apparent conflict? Yes, somewhat. But, like the talented, young Austrian musician that he was, he experimented with what he had, and since what he had was both the old and the emerging new, his early compositions in all forms can be seen to combine, at times hesitantly, features of both.

He proceeded with due care, and by the late 1760s his string quartets reflected a decisive definition as to form, expressive content, and compositional dexterity. Through the some 30 years that he was Kapellmeister to the titled Esterházys, he composed voluminously in all forms and was referred to as “our national favorite” by his countrymen. When in 1790 Prince Anton dismissed most of his court musicians, he retained Haydn on the payroll but gave him freedom to move about as he pleased. Haydn was more than ready to accept offers in London and to effectively conquer that bustling musical city which had for so long been dominated by, and still worshipped at the shrine of, the German-turned-Britisher, Handel.

Large fame, the adulation of a large public, an honorary doctorate from Oxford University, and the experience of the rich musical scene in London invigorated the 60-year-old Haydn and stimulated his creative juices. Among the works he produced upon returning to Vienna were the six hugely successful quartets, Opp. 71 and 74. These might have been the culmination of his quartet writing, but Haydn was not yet written out: In 1797, at the age of 65, he composed the six superb quartets, Op. 76; two years later he added what were to be the two final works to his quartet catalog, Op. 77. At his death in 1809, he left an unfinished quartet, which is listed as Op. 103.

The present Quartet, with its kind-of-silly nickname, “Rider,” christened (not by Haydn) because of the final movement’s somewhat galloping licks, must be considered one of the composer’s crowning achievements. (Remember, Haydn’s crown is filled with countless gems.) Whereas in his first quartets, Haydn was loath to give much, if any, important material to any but the first violin, he later wrote fully for four instruments. As a prime example, the present G-minor Quartet is an equal opportunity employer. In fact, all the players are pressed into quite demanding, heavy-duty activity, right from the striking, attention-getting opening. Most of the movement, except for the waltzy second theme, is designed in large strokes with dynamic rhythmic energy pressing ever forward.

Haydn loosens the pressure completely for a slow movement that has the deepest kind of sensibility. The music revolves around an awed, hymn-like theme that is both grand and solemn, its lofty expressiveness traced at an extremely slow tempo. The essential seriousness of the movement, however, does not restrain Haydn from some dramatic outbursts, but these are very much in character and help to define the grandeur of the whole musical statement.

The Minuet is not exactly grand, but it’s not trivial, either, which is one of those musical tricks not all composers can pull off. Haydn, of course, is one of history’s great tricksters, so this Minuet gains substance and momentum by way of its G-minor Trio.

Galloping or not, the last movement is in turn both fiery and charming. It also boasts some brilliant exhibitionism from the first violin; Haydn knew how to ingratiate himself to his players and his public.

-Orrin Howard

Come in and out of silence
Tone swirling in the balance.
Nothing, then everything
Waving into space.

Then light.
And after a longer while
Air.
And now sixteen strings manually animated
Vibrating through time.

When Harumi Rhodes of the Takacs Quartet asked me about writing a piece for the group I was surprised, greatly honored and fearful. The string quartet is considered a “perfect” ensemble. It inspires delicacy, sensitivity and adventure. The core range is smaller than that of the piano, yet its timbre allows for beauteous interplay. Harumi asked that the quartet be about anything in the natural world, an idea requested by lead commissioner Cal Performances. Fortunately, patterns in music and science pair well, so that brought relief.

Sketch made by Thomas Young to illustrate the two-slit diffraction of light. Narrow slits at A and B act as sources, and waves interfering in various phases are shown at C, D, E, and F. Presented to the Royal Society in 1803. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

I researched a wide array of subjects for over a year, including the life cycle, carbon reclamation, environmental protection, animal communication, starling murmurations, our last universal common ancestor (LUCA), black hole collisions and the subatomic realm. I also listened to the recordings of the Takacs Quartet with gusto. Systems layered upon other systems revealed a common flow to existence tying us to the initial outburst of energy and matter at the birth of our universe.

“Flow” starts like gas seeping from an infinitely full balloon about to pop. Then, as matter inflates space, climactic material is presented almost immediately before abruptly burning out for the universal dark ages. The Prelude examines “B’ing/BE’ing” melodically and harmonically through moments of pranayama (the transformative power of breath). It ends with a trailing Om.

The Lento brings further cooling and space in chorale around an octave B-centric pedal. Prelude motifs are given space to develop.

Quark Scherzo explores our fundamentally playful selves. The subatomic realm waltzes up and down while we embrace ideas of solidity and ego. The trio provides no break and instead intones a ballad over cello triplets. The movement ends in a virtuosic flurry.

The Finale settles into a stylized recitative where three lower strings solo before coming together to feature a soaring treble voice. Flowing triplets turn into a Classical Indian Dadra Tal (even six beat) rhythm in the bass line while upper strings bow the sides of their instruments simulating Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation. Upper strings join via pizzicati glissandi. There is a return to the Prelude opening, then a slingshot into ecstatic starling murmurations. Lower strings continue unrelentingly while violin lines chase one another, instantaneously turning and merging. They eventually land, and the sky calms through long D overtone glissando. A retreating tremolo reveals a melody first played by the viola, then shared throughout the ensemble to joyful conclusion.

— Nokuthula Endo Ngwenyama

In 1802, Beethoven directly confronted the severity of his hearing loss for the first time. In October, he penned the Heiligenstadt Testament, a heartbreaking confession of his struggles that mentions, but rejects, the option of suicide. Through an act of will, he transcended the most profound challenge one could imagine for his unique disposition. Shortly thereafter, Beethoven entered his so-called middle period, emerging as the heroic artist that revolutionized every musical genre he touched. The middle period is characterized by bold new works on a grand scale including the opera Fidelio, the Waldstein and Appassionata piano sonatas, and the Eroica (3rd) symphony. Between 1805 and 1806, Beethoven seized upon a commission by Count Razumovsky, channeling his newly restored life force into the supreme genre of chamber music to create perhaps the most revolutionary works of the his middle period: the epic set of three string quartets, Op. 59.

The String Quartet in C Major, Op. 59, No. 3 has acquired the nickname Eroica because of its glorious, triumphant finale. Initially, it was the most well received of the three quartets and probably remains the most frequently performed. It is one of the most radiant works Beethoven ever composed. Its beginning is as noteworthy as its ending, no doubt one of several places in which the Razumovsky quartets confounded its first listeners. Like Mozart’s Dissonance quartet (also in C major), a work that Beethoven greatly admired, it begins in obscurity: a brooding series of diminished chords whose destination grows ever more obscure as the outer voices, treble and bass, progressively diverge in a wedge shape. Any sense of motion fairly disintegrates. A clipped two-chord progression glances off C and stops, followed by a slow windup of tentative meanderings that finally, like a slingshot, launches full force into the blazing confirmation of C major. Once underway, the first movement revels in the harmonic play of a sonata that glorifies the home key. Fully engaged in the bliss of wavelike harmonic motion, one barely notices that Beethoven makes such wonderful music without a single distinctive theme. The entire movement features only a prominent two-note motive (that first, glancing step) and the “simple” flowing lines of scales and arpeggiated chords. These musical lines spread and weave across the span of four independent instruments to become elegant, mellifluous ribbons of light, simple motions turned to golden honey. This quality pervades most of the quartet.

The second movement is the cool point of contrast in the quartet, a delicate, ponderous movement veiled with melancholy. It is another sonata movement but with a curious form: the development section is relatively unpronounced and smoothly merged between the exposition and the recapitulation, the later reprising the themes in reverse order. The effect is that of a rondo where the gentle hope of a second theme surfaces between waves of mysterious sorrow. The third movement is not the wild scherzo so associated with Beethoven, but rather, a Menuetto marked Grazioso. Moderate and suave, it shares a noteworthy trait with the first movement: rather than distinctive themes, it returns to washes of essential motion, gentle scales in the minuet that sharpen into heroic arpeggios in the trio. Both middle movements have a relaxed quality so different than the middle movements of the other two Razumovsky quartets; they seem poised and reserved if not curiously hesitant. The Menuetto even fails to properly conclude. An unresolved bridge-like coda connects it seamlessly to the finale, an interim passage wherein the minuet’s clear major tonality clouds into the minor, pauses on the dominant, and waits with baited breath.

The finale is one of Beethoven’s grandest conceptions. Much like the function of the dissonant beginning in the first movement, the minuet’s coda provides a dark tension out of which the bright energy of the last movement emerges like the sun. The first violin establishes a light, driving motion that is perpetually sustained. Its long undulating theme is taken up by each of the other instruments in turn, thickening the texture with the apparent beginning of a mighty fugue. But as in many great contrapuntal wonders of the Classical era, the fugue (technically a canon) is really a short lived fugato, a primary theme whose character is the evocation of a fugue, a theme of brilliant distinction within a tapestry of contrasting material that fills the space between fugal episodes like gold surrounds the setting of a few precious gems. The fugato briefly recurs with a new urgency in the development and then crowns the recapitulation, elongated with a crystal clear countersubject for a conclusion of truly heroic impact. The waves of shining ribbons swell and distinctly diverge, the treble rising, the base dropping: here Beethoven completes a mighty symmetry across the whole quartet by reprising the opening wedge of dissonance transformed with resolute harmony, a brilliant cadential coda in C major.

All three of the Razumovsky quartets are conceived on larger scale that even the most noteworthy of their predecessors from any composer. Beethoven’s genius enabled him to do this while, at the same time, strengthening a sense of unity across the greater expanse. Op. 59, No. 1 is famous as the first quartet to omit the repeat of exposition: a false start immediately diverts into an enormous development section with the paradoxical effect of tightening the entire movement into a single gesture. Two of the quartets fuse their last movements together without a break in the music, a further technique of joining separate parts into a larger, unified whole. There are symmetries separated by vast distances such as the beginning and end of the third quartet. It can be argued that there are even specific harmonic relationships between the end of one quartet and the beginning of the next. Many have suggested that Beethoven conceived of the three separate Razumovsky quartets as a unified whole. The vast first movement of Op. 59, No. 1 is not fully balanced until one reaches its magnificent counterpart in the finale of Op. 59, No. 3. Perhaps the three quartets function like a gigantic three movement work with a broad and complex first movement in F major, a tense contrasting movement in e minor, and a bright, exultant finale in C major. A performance of the complete set in a single concert gives this very impression. With the proper preparation for its context within this larger setting, the third quartet acquires a further triumphal radiance. The distinguished scholar Leonard Ratner suggests that all of Beethoven’s quartets may even form a kind of mega-work, a single great narrative that stands apart from all other music in history.