Program Notes - San Francisco Performances

presents
ALEXANDER STRING
QUARTET and
JOYCE YANG, piano
Zakarias Grafilo, violin Frederick Lifsitz, violin Paul Yarbrough, viola
Sandy Wilson, cello
Tuesday, November 10, 2015 | 7:30pm
Herbst Theatre
SCHUMANN
Quintet for Piano and Strings in
E-flat Major, Opus 44
SCHNITTKE
Piano Quintet
Allegro brillante
In modo d’una Marcia
Scherzo: Molto vivace
Allegro, ma non troppo
Moderato
Tempo di valse
Andante
Lento
Moderato pastorale
INTERMISSION
BRAHMS
Piano Quintet in F minor, Opus 34
Allegro non troppo
Andante un poco adagio
Scherzo: Allegro
Finale: Poco sostenuto; Allegro non troppo
The Alexander String Quartet is Ensemble-in-Residence with San Francisco Performances in association with San Francisco State University and
the May T. Morrison Chamber Music Center.
The Alexander String Quartet is represented by BesenArts LLC, Tenafly, NJ.
The Quartet frequently performs and records on a matched set of instruments by the San Francisco-based maker Francis Kuttner, circa 1987.
Joyce Yang is represented by Arts Management Group, 130 West 57th Street,
Suite 6A, New York NY 10019 artsmg.com
Hamburg Steinway Model D and piano technical services, Pro Piano,
San Francisco.
For Tickets and More: sfperformances.org | 415.392.2545
ARTIST PROFILES
The Alexander String Quartet celebrated its
thirtieth anniversary in 2011–12. The Quartet
has been an ensemble-in-residence since 1989
with San Francisco Performances, the result of
a unique partnership between SF Performances, San Francisco State University and the
May T. Morrison Chamber Music Center. Starting in 1994, the Quartet joined with SF Performances’ music historian-in-residence, Robert
Greenberg, to present the Saturday Morning
Series exploring string quartet literature.
The Quartet has appeared on SF Performances’ mainstage Chamber Series many times
since 1990, collaborating with such artists as
soprano Elly Ameling, clarinetists Richard Stolzman, Joan Enric Lluna and Eli Eban, violists
Andrew Duckles, Jody Levitz and Charith Premawardhana, and pianists James Tocco, Menahem Pressler, Sarah Cahill and Jeremy Menuhin.
The Quartet is also the cornerstone of SF Performances’ educational outreach in public high
schools. In celebration of the Quartet’s thirtieth
anniversary, SF Performances commissioned a
new work for string quartet and mezzo-soprano
from Jake Heggie, which premiered in a performance in collaboration with Joyce DiDonato in
February 2012 at the Herbst Theatre.
Joyce Yang makes her SF Performances debut with this recital.
ARTIST PROFILES
Having celebrated its 30th Anniversary in
2011, the Alexander String Quartet has
performed in the major music capitals of five
continents, securing its standing among the
world’s premier ensembles. Widely admired
for its interpretations of Beethoven, Mozart,
and Shostakovich, the quartet’s recordings
of the Beethoven cycle (twice), Bartók, and
Shostakovich cycle have won international
critical acclaim. The quartet has also established itself as an important advocate of new
| 1
music through over 25 commissions from
such composers as Jake Heggie, Cindy Cox,
Augusta Read Thomas, Robert Greenberg,
Martin Bresnick, Cesar Cano, and Pulitzer
Prize-winner Wayne Peterson. A new work
by Tarik O’Regan, commissioned for the Alexander by the Boise Chamber Music Series,
will have its premiere in 2016.
The Alexander String Quartet is a major
artistic presence in its home base of San
Francisco, serving since 1989 as Ensemble
in Residence of San Francisco Performances
and Directors of the Morrison Chamber Music
Center in the College of Liberal and Creative
Arts at San Francisco State University.
The Alexander String Quartet’s annual calendar of concerts includes engagements at
major halls throughout North America and
Europe. The Quartet has appeared at Lincoln
Center, the 92nd Street Y, and the Metropolitan Museum in New York City; Jordan Hall in
Boston; the Library of Congress and Dumbarton Oaks in Washington; and chamber music
societies and universities across the North
American continent. This past summer, the
Quartet returned as faculty to the Norfolk
Chamber Music Festival, a nexus of their early career. Recent overseas tours have brought
them to the U.K., the Czech Republic, the
Netherlands, Italy, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, France, Greece, the Republic of Georgia, Argentina, Panamá, and
the Philippines. They returned to Poland for
their debut performances at the Beethoven
Easter Festival in 2015.
Among the fine musicians with whom the
Alexander String Quartet has collaborated are
pianists Joyce Yang, Roger Woodward, AnneMarie McDermott, Menachem Pressler, and
Jeremy Menuhin; clarinetists Joan Enric Lluna, David Shifrin, Richard Stoltzman, and Eli
Eban; soprano Elly Ameling; mezzo-soprano
Joyce DiDonato; cellists Lynn Harrell, Sadao
Harada, and David Requiro; and jazz greats
Branford Marsalis, David Sanchez, and Andrew Speight. The Quartet has worked with
many composers including Aaron Copland,
George Crumb, and Elliott Carter, and has long
enjoyed a close relationship with composerlecturer Robert Greenberg, performing numerous lecture-concerts with him annually.
The Alexander String Quartet added considerably to its distinguished and wide-ranging discography over the past decade, now
recording exclusively for the FoghornClassics
label. There were three major releases in the
2013-2014 season: The combined string quartet cycles of Bartók and Kodály, recorded on
the renowned Ellen M. Egger matched quartet of instruments built by San Francisco luthier, Francis Kuttner (“If ever an album had
2 | ‘Grammy nominee’ written on its front cover,
this is it.” –Audiophile Audition); the string
quintets and sextets of Brahms with Toby
Appel and David Requiro (“a uniquely detailed, transparent warmth” –Strings Magazine); and the Schumann and Brahms piano
quintets with Joyce Yang (“passionate, soulful readings of two pinnacles of the chamber
repertory” –The New York Times). Their recording of music of Gershwin and Kern was
released in the summer of 2012, following the
spring 2012 recording of the clarinet quintet of Brahms and a new quintet from César
Cano, in collaboration with Joan Enric Lluna,
as well as a disc in collaboration with the San
Francisco Choral Artists. Next to be released
will be an album of works by Cindy Cox.
The Alexander’s 2009 release of the complete Beethoven cycle was described by Music
Web International as performances “uncompromising in power, intensity and spiritual
depth,” while Strings Magazine described the
set as “a landmark journey through the greatest of all quartet cycles.” The FoghornClassics
label released a three-CD set (Homage) of the
Mozart quartets dedicated to Haydn in 2004.
Foghorn released the a six-CD album (Fragments) of the complete Shostakovich quartets in 2006 and 2007, and a recording of the
complete quartets of Pulitzer prize-winning
San Francisco composer, Wayne Peterson,
was released in the spring of 2008. BMG Classics released the Quartet’s first recording of
Beethoven cycle on its Arte Nova label to tremendous critical acclaim in 1999.
The Alexander String Quartet was formed
in New York City in 1981 and captured international attention as the first American
quartet to win the London International
String Quartet Competition in 1985. The
Quartet has received honorary degrees
from Allegheny College and Saint Lawrence
University, and Presidential medals from
Baruch College (CUNY).
Pianist Joyce Yang came to international
attention in 2005 when she won the silver
medal at the 12th Van Cliburn International
Piano Competition. The youngest contestant at 19 years old, she also took home the
awards for Best Performance of Chamber Music and of a New Work. In 2010 Yang received
an Avery Fisher Career Grant.
Yang has performed with the New York
Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Los
Angeles Philharmonic, BBC Philharmonic,
and the Chicago, Houston, Pittsburgh, San
Francisco, and Sydney symphony orchestras, among many others, working with such
distinguished conductors as James Conlon,
Edo de Waart, Lorin Maazel, Peter Oundjian,
David Robertson, Leonard Slatkin, Bramwell
Tovey, and Jaap van Zweden. She has appeared in recital at New York’s Lincoln Center and Metropolitan Museum, Washington’s
Kennedy Center, Chicago’s Symphony Hall,
and Zurich’s Tonhalle.
Yang kicks off the 2015–16 season with a
tour of eight summer festivals (Aspen, Seattle, and Bravo! Vail among them) before
embarking on a steady stream of debuts,
returns, and chamber music concerts. She
reunites with the New York Philharmonic
under Tovey for a five-date engagement of
Falla’s Nights in the Gardens of Spain; makes
her New Jersey Symphony debut with Rachmaninoff’s Concerto No. 3 in an evening celebrating the orchestra’s season finale and Music Director Jacques Lacombe’s last concert
with the company; performs and records the
world premiere of Michael Torke’s Piano Concerto, a piece created expressly for her and
commissioned by the Albany Symphony; and
plays Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2
with the Melbourne Symphony in Australia
in yet another triumphant return. Additional
appearances showcasing her vast repertoire
include performances with the Colorado
Springs, Orlando, and Reading Philharmonics, and the Alabama, Anchorage, Corpus
Christi, Greenwich, Milwaukee, Nashville,
Pasadena, Princeton, Santa Fe, Utah, and
Vancouver symphonies.
Born in Seoul, Korea, in 1986, Yang received her first piano lesson from her aunt
at age four. In 1997 she moved to the United
States to begin studies at the pre-college division of the Juilliard School. After winning
the Philadelphia Orchestra’s Greenfield Student Competition, she performed Prokofiev’s
Third Piano Concerto with that orchestra at
just twelve years old. Yang appears in the
film In the Heart of Music, a documentary
about the 2005 Cliburn Competition. A Steinway artist, she lives in New York City.
PROGRAM NOTES
Quintet for Piano and
Strings in E-flat Major,
Opus 44
ROBERT SCHUMANN
Born June 8, 1810, Zwickau
Died July 29, 1856, Endenich
Robert Schumann established himself as a
composer with his pieces for piano and his
songs, but in 1841, the year after his marriage to the young Clara Wieck, Schumann
wrote for orchestra, and during the winter
of 1842 he began to think about chamber
For Tickets and More: sfperformances.org | 415.392.2545
music. Clara was gone on a month-long
concert tour to Copenhagen in April of that
year, and—left behind in Leipzig—the alwaysfragile Schumann suffered an anxiety attack
in her absence (he took refuge, in his words,
in “beer and champagne”). But he also used
the spring of that year to study the quartets
of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. After recognizing what those masters had achieved
in their quartets, Schumann felt even more
assaulted. His language from that summer betrays his anxiety—so threatened was
Schumann that he almost could not say the
word “string quartet.” Instead, he said only
that he was having “quartet-ish thoughts”
and referred to the music he was planning
as “quartet-essays.” Finally he overcame his
fears, and in June and July of 1842 Schumann
quickly composed three string quartets.
While there is much attractive music in
those quartets, no one would claim that they
are idiomatically written for the medium.
Schumann did not play a stringed instrument, and those three quartets—however
sound their musical logic—often sit uneasily
under the hand. But at this point Schumann,
still enthusiastic about chamber music,
made a fertile decision: he combined the
piano—his own instrument—with the string
quartet. In the process he created the first
great piano quintet—and his finest piece of
chamber music.
After struggling to write the three quartets,
Schumann found that the Piano Quintet came
easily. He made the initial sketches at the end
of September and had the score complete by
October 12. The first performance, a private
reading with Clara at the piano, took place in
November. A second performance was scheduled in the Schumann home on December 8,
but Clara was sick, and so Mendelssohn replaced her and sight-read the piano part; the
members of the Gewandhaus Quartet (whose
first violinist Ferdinand David would three
years later give the first performance of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto) were the other
performers. That would have been an evening
to sit in on, not just for the distinction of the
performers but also to watch two composers
at work. At the end of the read-through, Mendelssohn suggested several revisions including replacing the second trio section of the
scherzo, and Schumann followed his advice.
Clara, however, was the pianist at the public
premiere at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig on
January 8, 1843.
The Piano Quintet may be Schumann’s
most successful chamber work, but this
music sometimes stretches the notion of
the equality of all players that is central to
chamber music. Schumann’s quintet has a
clear star: the piano is the dominant force in
this music—there is hardly a measure when
it is not playing—and Schumann uses it in
different ways, sometimes setting it against
the other four instruments, sometimes using
all five in unison, rarely allowing the quartet
to play by itself. The addition of his own instrument to the string quartet clearly opened
possibilities for Schumann that he did not
recognize in the quartet.
The first movement, aptly named Allegro brillante, bursts to life as all five instruments in octaves shout out the opening idea,
a theme whose angular outline will shape
much of the movement. Piano alone has the
singing second subject: Schumann marks
this dolce as the piano presents it, then
espressivo as viola and cello take it up in
turn. This second theme may bring welcome
calm, but it is the driving energy of the opening subject that propels the music—much of
the development goes to this theme—and the
movement builds to nearly symphonic proportions as it drives to its energetic close.
The second movement—In modo d’una
Marcia—is much in the manner of a funeral
march, though Schumann did not himself
call it that. The stumbling tread of the march
section—in C minor—is interrupted by two
episodes: the first a wistful interlude for
first violin, the second—Agitato—driven by
pounding triplets in the piano. Schumann
combines his various episodes in the final pages of this movement, which closes
quietly in serene C Major. The propulsive
Scherzo molto vivace runs up and down the
scale, and again Schumann provides two interludes: the first feels like an instrumental
transcription of one of his songs, while the
second powers its way along a steady rush of
sixteenth-note perpetual motion.
The last movement is the most complex, for
it returns not just to the manner of the opening movement but also to its thematic material and then treats that in new ways. This Allegro, ma non troppo begins in a “wrong” key
(G minor) and only gradually makes its way
to E-flat Major, while its second theme, for
first violin, arrives in E Major. At the climax of
this sonata-form structure, Schumann brings
matters to a grand pause, then re-introduces
the opening subject of the first movement
and develops it fugally, ingeniously using the
first theme of the finale as a countersubject.
It is brilliant writing, and it drives the Quintet
to a triumphant close.
Clara Schumann, perhaps not the most
unbiased judge of her husband’s work, was
nevertheless exactly right in her estimation
of this music. In her diary she described it as
“Magnificent—a work filled with energy and
For Tickets and More: sfperformances.org | 415.392.2545
freshness.” As a measure of his wife’s affection for the Piano Quintet, Schumann dedicated it to her.
Piano Quintet
ALFRED SCHNITTKE
Born November 24, 1934, Engels
Died August 3, 1998, Hamburg
Alfred Schnittke attended the Moscow
Conservatory in the 1950s, taught at the Conservatory from 1961 until 1972, and began his
career as a rather conventional composer.
But Schnittke became interested in such
“Western” techniques as serialism, electronic
music, and quoting from earlier composers,
and he left the Conservatory to work at the
Moscow Experimental Studio of Electronic
Music. Soon he was labeled an “avant garde”
composer in the conservative circles of Soviet music, but that description is unfortunate
because it refers only to technique. What distinguishes Schnittke’s music is its fusion of a
refined technique with emotional depth, and
many of his scores are leavened with a sharp
wit. Schnittke suffered an extremely serious
heart attack in 1985 and never fully regained
his health; he emigrated to Germany, where
he died at age 63.
Schnittke’s Piano Quintet grew out of a
devastating moment in the composer’s life—
the death of his mother—and it had a difficult
genesis, taking four years to complete. In a
note for a recording, the composer has described its composition: “In the night of 16th–
17th September 1972 my mother Maria Vogel
died of a heart attack. My aim to compose a
piece of simple yet at the same time earnest
character in her memory set an almost insoluble problem before me. The first movement
of a Piano Quintet had come into being almost without complication. After that it went
no further—for I had to transplant everything
I wrote from imaginary sonic locations (in
which everything was already indescribable,
even dissonance) into a psychologically real
environment, where tormenting pain has an
almost light-hearted effect…” Schnittke’s Piano Quintet is not a celebration of his mother’s life and memory, but a direct reaction to
living through the pain of her loss. The opening Moderato is extremely quiet music, but it
frequently feels full of menace. The music begins with a long piano solo, and the strings’
response, played without vibrato, has an almost icy quality. Themes here are brief, fragmentary, repetitive.
Unable to continue, Schnittke set the work
aside for four years and then resumed work,
completing the second movement, which he
| 3
calls “an unearthly waltz” based on the name
B-A-C-H (the note sequence Bb-A-C-B). Over
the jaunty waltz rhythm, this music dances
very somberly; after a plangent middle section, the waltz resumes, but now it is full of
sharp outbursts. The third and fourth movements are craggy and dissonant. Schnittke
noted that these two movements “are based
upon situations of genuine grief, about
which I wish to say nothing because they are
of a highly personal nature and can only be
devalued by words.” Briefest of the movements, the finale has the intriguing marking
Moderato pastorale. Schnittke described it as
“a mirror-image passacaglia, the theme of
which is repeated fourteen times, whilst all
the other sonic events are mere shadows of
an already disappeared tragic perception.”
The passacaglia theme, a disarmingly simple
little tune, goes its own way in the piano, and
around these repetitions the strings weave
reminiscences of the earlier movements before the stunning close, where the music
fades into silence on the passacaglia theme.
In this sense, the Quintet takes as its model
the Shostakovich Eighth Symphony of 1943:
both are five-movement works that deal with
great pain (the symphony was written in response to World War II), and both end with
a passacaglia movement that seems almost
wispy at first but which reflects a direct and
unfiltered reaction to devastating experience.
The parallel with the symphony may not
be all that tenuous. At the suggestion of Russian conductor Gennady Rozhdestvensky,
who recognized the dramatic character of
this music, in 1978 Schnittke orchestrated
the Piano Quintet, and this version—titled In
Memoriam—was first performed in Moscow
on December 29, 1979.
Quintet for Piano and
Strings in F minor, Opus 34
JOHANNES BRAHMS
Born May 7, 1833, Hamburg
Died April 3, 1897, Vienna
Brahms began work on the music that
would eventually become his Piano Quintet
in F minor during the summer of 1862, when
he was 29 years old and still living in Hamburg. As first conceived, however, this music
was not a piano quintet. Brahms originally
composed it as a string quintet—string quartet plus an extra cello—and almost surely he
took as a model the great String Quintet in C
Major of Schubert, a composer he very much
admired. But when Joseph Joachim and colleagues played through the string quintet for
the composer, all who heard it felt it unsatis-
4 | factory: an ensemble of strings alone could
not satisfactorily project the power of this
music. So Brahms set out to remedy this—
he returned to the score during the winter
of 1863–64 and recast it as a sonata for two
pianos. Once again the work was judged
not wholly successful—it had all the power
the music called for, but this version lacked
the sustained sonority possible with strings
that much of this music seemed to demand.
Among those confused by the two-piano version was Clara Schumann, who offered the
young composer a completely different suggestion: “Its skillful combinations are interesting throughout, it is masterly from every
point of view, but—it is not a sonata, but a
work whose ideas you might—and must—
scatter, as from a horn of plenty, over an
entire orchestra…Please, dear Johannes, for
this once take my advice and recast it.”
Recast it Brahms did, but not for orchestra. Instead, during the summer and fall
of 1864 he arranged it for piano and string
quartet, combining the dramatic impact of
the two-piano version with the string sonority of the original quintet. In this form
it has come down to us today, one of the
masterpieces of Brahms’ early years, and it
remains a source of wonder that music that
sounds so right in its final version could
have been conceived for any other combination of instruments. Clara, who had so
much admired her husband’s piano quintet,
found Brahms’ example a worthy successor,
describing it as “a very special joy to me”
(Brahms published the two-piano version
as his Opus 34b, and it is occasionally heard
in this form, but he destroyed all the parts of
the string quintet version).
The Piano Quintet shows the many virtues
of the young Brahms—strength, lyricism, ingenuity, nobility—and presents them in music of unusual breadth and power. This is big
music: if all the repeats are taken, the Quintet can stretch out to nearly three-quarters
of an hour, and there are moments when the
sheer sonic heft of a piano and string quartet
together makes one understand why Clara
thought this music might be most effectively
presented by a symphony orchestra.
The Quintet is also remarkable for young
Brahms’ skillful evolution of his themes:
several of the movements derive much of
their material from the simplest of figures,
which are then developed ingeniously. The
very beginning of the Allegro non troppo is
a perfect illustration. In octaves, first violin,
cello, and piano present the opening theme,
which ranges dramatically across four measures and then comes to a brief pause. Instantly the music seems to explode with vi-
tality above an agitated piano figure. But the
piano’s rushing sixteenth-notes are simply a
restatement of the opening theme at a much
faster tempo, and this compression of material marks the entire movement—that opening
theme will reappear in many different forms.
A second subject in E Major, marked dolce
and sung jointly by viola and cello, also spins
off a wealth of secondary material, and the
extended development leads to a quiet coda,
marked poco sostenuto. The tempo quickens
as the music powers its way to the resounding chordal close.
In sharp contrast, the Andante, un poco
Adagio sings with a quiet charm. The piano’s gently-rocking opening theme, lightly
echoed by the strings, gives way to a more
animated and flowing middle section before
the opening material reappears, now subtly
varied. Matters change sharply once again
with the C-minor Scherzo, which returns to
the dramatic mood of the first movement.
The cello’s ominous pizzicato C hammers insistently throughout, and once again Brahms
wrings surprising wealth from the simplest
of materials: a nervous, stuttering sixteenthnote figure is transformed within seconds
into a heroic chorale for massed strings, and
later Brahms generates a brief fugal section
from this same theme. The trio section breaks
free of the darkness of the scherzo and slips
into the C-Major sunlight for an all-too-brief
moment of quiet nobility before the music returns to C minor and a da capo repeat.
The finale opens with strings alone,
reaching upward in chromatic uncertainty
before the Allegro non troppo main theme
steps out firmly in the cello. The movement seems at first to be a rondo, but this
is a rondo with unexpected features: it offers a second theme, sets the rondo theme
in unexpected keys, and transforms the
cello’s healthy little opening tune in music
of toughness and turbulence.
Clara Schumann, who had received the
dedication of her husband’s quintet, was
instrumental in the dedication of Brahms’
work. Princess Anna of Hesse had heard
Brahms and Clara perform this music in its
version for two pianos and was so taken with
it that Brahms dedicated not only that version to the princess but the Piano Quintet as
well. When the princess asked Clara what
she might send Brahms as a measure of her
gratitude, Clara had a ready suggestion. And
so Princess Anna sent Brahms a treasure that
would remain his prized possession for the
rest of his life: Mozart’s manuscript of the
Symphony No. 40 in G Minor.
—Program notes by Eric Bromberger
For Tickets and More: sfperformances.org | 415.392.2545