jasper string quartet

featuring wei-yi yang · piano

Morse Recital Hall • Tuesday, December 11, 2012 at 8 pmMusic of Mendelssohn, Ligeti, and Schumann

Robert Blocker, Dean

Oneppo Chamber Music Series · David Shifrin, Artistic Director

jasper string quartet

J Freivogel, violin · Sae Chonabayashi, violinSam Quintal, viola · Rachel Henderson Freivogel, cello

Morse Recital Hall in Sprague Memorial Hall december 11, 2012 tue · 8:00 pm

Felix Mendelssohn1809–1847

György Ligeti1923–2006

Robert Schumann1810–1856

String Quartet No. 6 in F minor, Op. 80I. Allegro vivace assaiII. Allegro assaiIII. AdagioIV. Finale: Allegro molto

String Quartet No. 1, “Métamorphoses nocturnes”Allegro graziosoVivace, capricciosoAdagio mestoPrestoPrestissimoAndante tranquilloTempo de Valse, moderato, con eleganza, un poco capricciosoSubito prestissimoAllegretto, un poco giovialePrestissimoAd Libitum, senza misuraLento

intermission

Piano Quintet in E-flat major, Op. 44I. Allegro brillanteII. In modo d’una marcia. Un poco largamenteIII. Scherzo: Molto vivaceIV. Allegro ma non troppo

Wei-Yi Yang, piano

As a courtesy to the performers and audience, turn off cell phones and pagers. Please do

not leave the hall during selections. Photography or recording of any kind is prohibited.

Winner of the 2012 Cleveland Quartet Award, the Jasper String Quartet has been hailed as “sonically delightful and expressively compelling” (The Strad) and as “powerful” (New York Times). They play “with sparkling vitality and great verve.... polished, engaged, and in tune with one another” (Classical Voice of North Carolina).

Based in New Haven, CT, the Jasper Quartet recently released two highly acclaimed albums on Sono Luminus, featuring the works of Beethoven, Schubert and Aaron Jay Kernis. The quartet has been awarded, in conjunction with Astral Artists of Philadelphia, a 2012 grant from Chamber Music America through their Residency Partnership Program. In addition, they are Ensemble-in-Residence at Classic Chamber Concerts (Naples, FL).

After winning the Grand Prize and the Audience Prize in the 2008 Plowman Chamber Music Competition, the Jaspers went on to win the Grand Prize at the 2008 Coleman Competition, First Prize at Chamber Music Yellow Springs 2008, and the Silver Medal at the 2008 and 2009 Fischoff Chamber Music Competitions. They were the first ensemble to win the Yale School of Music’s Horatio Parker Memorial Prize (2009), an award established in 1945 and selected by the faculty for “best fulfilling ... lofty musical ideals.” In 2010, they joined the roster of Astral Artists after winning their national auditions.

Originally formed at Oberlin Conservatory, the Jasper Quartet began pursuing a professional career in 2006 when they studied with James Dunham, Norman Fischer, and Kenneth Goldsmith as Rice University’s Graduate Quartet-in-Residence. In 2008, the quartet continued its training with the Tokyo String Quartet as Yale University’s Graduate Quartet-in-Residence.

They are named after Jasper National Park in Alberta, Canada, and J and Rachel are married. Dispeker Artists represents the quartet throughout the world and Astral Artists represents the quartet in Pennsylvania.

» www.jasperquartet.com » facebook.com/jasperstringquartet

About the Artists

Dispeker Artists represents the quartet throughout the world and Astral Artists represent the quartet in Pennsylvania.

About the Artists

Internationally acclaimed pianist Wei-Yi Yang enjoys a flourishing concert career, appearing before audiences in North and Central America, Asia, Europe, and Australia, in solo recitals, chamber music concerts and with symphony orchestras. Most recently, Mr. Yang was praised by the New York Times as the soloist in a “sensational” performance of Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphonie at Carnegie Hall. Winner of the Gold Medal and Grand Prize in the San Antonio International Piano Competition, Mr. Yang has performed in such prestigious venues as Lincoln Center; Steinway Hall; Merkin Hall; the Kennedy Center; the Kumho Art Hall in Seoul, South Korea; the Royal Scottish Academy of Music; the Great Hall (Leeds, England); the Royal Dublin Society; and the Australian Broad- casting Corporation, among many others around the world. An avid chamber musician, Mr. Yang has performed with members of the New York Philharmonic, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony, San Francisco Symphony,

Pittsburgh Symphony, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Orpheus and Saint Paul Chamber Orchestras, the London Symphony, Singapore Symphony, and Orquestra do Estado de São Paulo, among others.

Born in Taiwan of Chinese and Japanese heritage, Mr. Yang was educated first in the United Kingdom, and then as a scholarship recipient under the tutelage of Arkady Aronov at the Manhattan School of Music. Mr. Yang has worked with such artists as Claude Frank, Peter Frankl, Vera Gornostaeva, Byron Janis, Murray Perahia, and the late Hans Graf. Under the guidance of Boris Berman, Mr. Yang was awarded a doctorate in musical arts by Yale University in 2004. In addition to guest teaching and performing in Germany, Hong Kong, Taipei, Shanghai, and Daejeon, Korea, Mr. Yang has presented master classes and performances in such institutions as Princeton University, University of Missouri, Syracuse University, and Ithaca College. Mr. Yang’s performances have been featured around the world via international television, radio, and web broadcasting media. He can be heard on the Renegade Classics, Albany Records, and Holland-America Music Society labels. Mr. Yang has appeared at festivals in Nassau (the Bahamas), Novi Sad (Serbia), Monterrey (Mexico), Kotor (Montenegro), PianoFest (Long Island), Norfolk (Connecticut), Napa Valley, and La Jolla (California). Mr. Yang has recently collabo- rated with such artists as Richard Stoltzman, Axel Strauss, Frederica von Stade and the Pacifica, Cassatt, and Tokyo String Quartets. Wei-Yi Yang joined the faculty at Yale University in 2005.

Notes on the Program

wrote the String Quartet No. 1 (“Métamorphoses nocturnes”). He had not yet written any other piece as ambitious or challenging, and though the totalitarianism had relaxed slightly by the time he completed the piece, he likely did not think the government would approve of it. The string quartet’s première had to wait until after he fled Hungary, shortly following the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. He traveled first to Vienna, and on May 8, 1958, the Ramor Quartet finally premiered the piece there. It received few further performances until the Arditti Quartet began to perform it twenty years later. Other quartets discovered the piece in this way and took it up as well.

Ligeti’s quartet follows Béla Bartók (1881–1945) in character and style, as Ligeti had limited access to other twentieth-century masters while in Hungary. Written in one movement and distinctly non-tonal, the twenty-minute piece uses many effects to achieve a wide variety of emotions, once giving “theatrical” as an instruction to play a particularly loud passage.

robert schumannPiano Quintet in E-flat major, Op. 44

Robert Schumann composed the Piano Quintet in E-flat major Op. 44 in 1842, a year in which he also composed three string quartets and a piano quartet, together his first major entry into the chamber music genre. Scholars now refer to this year as his “year of chamber music,” following years spent writing intensively in other genres.

Franz Liszt had written to Schumann in 1839, exhorting him to devote time to “trios, quintets,

felix mendelssohnString Quartet No. 6 in F minor, Op. 80

Felix Mendelssohn completed the String Quartet in F minor, Op. 80 in September 1847, only a few weeks before he passed away on November 4. He had retreated to the Swiss resort of Interlaken at the end of May to try to recover from his beloved sister Fanny’s death on May 14, an event that contributed to his increasingly poor health. The loss stunned him. Felix had only just returned two days earlier from England, where he had conducted six performances of the newly revised Elijah, tiring him. On May 19 he wrote to his sister Rebecka: “... Since yesterday and today, and for many, many days to come, I’ll be unable to write anything beyond — God help us, God help us!” Months later in Interlaken, he echoed these thoughts on the first page of the String Quartet by writing “H.d.m.” (“Hilf du mir”, literally “Help you me”), a religious plea.

Widely accepted as expressing the loss of his sister, this string quartet exudes fierce emotion, from the fiery opening theme of the first movement to the emphatic ending of the last.

györgy ligetiString Quartet No. 1

György Ligeti grew up in a Jewish family in Hungary in the aftermath of the First World War. At age 22 he moved to Budapest, where he remained until fleeing the country in 1956. In the years following the Second World War, Hungary experienced a period of despotism in which the rulers made musical innovation nearly impossible. During this time, in 1953–1954, Ligeti

or septets,” noting that “no one living today is more capable of doing so than you,” but to no immediate avail. In early 1842, Robert and Clara toured north German cities giving concerts together, but after snubs from court officials in favor of Clara, Robert grew upset and withdrew to Leipzig on March 10, citing his “undignified situation” and leaving Clara to continue the tour.

At home, he began studying scores of string quartets by Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, reflecting his belief as a critic that entrants to the genre should possess a true knowledge of its history. After reuniting with Clara on April 25, they played the pieces together at the keyboard. Schumann wrote his piano quintet later in the year, and it had early and lasting success. He had dedicated it to Clara, making it the only work dedicated to her after their wedding, and she gave the private and public premieres. Schumann selected an unusual instrumentation for the piece: though many piano quintets date to the eighteenth century, contradicting the oft-repeated claim that Schumann wrote the first one, no composer of his prominence had yet contributed to the genre. Wagner wrote to Schumann in 1843 that he “liked the Quintet very much: I asked your lovely wife to play it twice.” Brahms transcribed the scherzo of Schumann’s quintet for solo piano in 1854 and wrote his own piano quintet in 1862. Ironically, criticism that stung Robert came from Liszt himself, who after a specially arranged private performance in 1848 to hear the work for the first time, dismissed it as too “Leipzigerisch,” likely alluding to similarities to Mendelssohn’s conservatism in terms of form and harmony. Liszt’s attitude stands out amidst a great

tapestry of accolades from contemporary critics.The first movement, in sonata-allegro form, immediately introduces a bold theme, followed by a soft, reflective piano transition which serves as recurring material to link together sections. The second theme, shared by the cello and viola, exhibits Schumann’s propensity for lyricism and dialogue: in his writings on chamber music, he noted that composers should use a conversational tone in which “everyone has something to say.” In the coda, added accents on fourth beats intensify the ending.

In the second movement, a march more funereal than martial, all instruments play at times in the very bottom of their ranges. Again Schumann’s lyricism appears prominently in the second theme, a violin and cello duet accompanied by a three- against-four rhythm in the other instruments. Both the second and third movements use a recurring motive, observing a type of rondo form.

The third movement, a scherzo, features rapidly rising scales in unisons and thirds, with trio interludes exploring distant harmonic areas. The grand final movement unifies the piece by triumphantly presenting, at the climax, a double fugue combining the primary themes of the first and final movements.

– Noah Horn

Notes on the Program

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Operations: Tara Deming, Chris MelilloPiano Curators: Brian Daley, William Harold

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Peter Frankl, piano

december 12Morse Recital Hall | Wed | 8 pm

Horowitz Piano Series With Ettore Causa, viola. Schubert: Sonata B major, D. 575; “Arpeggione” Sonata in A minor, D. 821; Debussy: Images, Estampes.

Tickets $12–22, Students $6–9

Guitar Chamber Music

december 13Morse Recital Hall | Thu | 8 pm

Student EnsemblesBenjamin Verdery, director. Music by

Giuliani, Boccherini, Takemitsu, Villa-Lobos, and more.

Free Admission

Wendy Sharp & Friends

january 20Morse Recital Hall | Sun | 4 pm

Faculty Artist SeriesMusic by Mozart, Dvorák and Honegger.

Wendy Sharp, violin, with Marka Gustavsson, violin; Mimi Hwang, cello; and

Melvin Chen, piano. Free Admission

Tokyo String Quartet

january 22Morse Recital Hall | Tues | 8 pm

Oneppo Chamber Music SeriesQuartets by Haydn, Bartók & Mendelssohn.

Tickets $30–$40, Students $20