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presents…

WILLIAM KANENGISER | Guitar

ALEXANDER STRING QUARTET | Ensemble-in-Residence

Zakarias Grafilo | Violin Paul Yarbrough | ViolaFrederick Lifsitz | Violin Sandy Wilson | Cello

Saturday, March 7, 2020 | 7:30pmHerbst Theatre

BRITISH INVASION

LENNON/ Three selections from “Beatlerianas” (1976)McCARTNEY— Eleanor Rigby LÉO BROUWER She’s Leaving Home Penny Lane

IAN KROUSE Music in Four Sharps (On Dowland’s “Frog Galliard,” 2004)

STING— Prisms—Six Songs by Sting (2013) NORTH AMERICAN PREMIEREDUŠAN Every Breath You Take (Prelude)BOGDANOVIĆ Message in a Bottle (Dance) Shape of My Heart (Ballad) Fields of Gold (Choral) Desert Rose (Dance) Roxanne (Passacaglia)

INTERMISSION

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JOHN DUARTE English Suite, Opus 31 (1962) Prelude Folk Song Round Dance

Mr. Kanengiser

BENJAMIN String Quartet No. 3, Opus 94 (1975, selections)BRITTEN II. Ostinato. Very fast IV. Burlesque. Fast—con fuoco

Alexander String Quartet

IAN KROUSE Labyrinth on a Theme of Led Zeppelin (1994, rev. 2019) WORLD PREMIERE (guitar and quartet version) I. Fast rock tempo II. Very fast III. Tempo 1 IV. Quasi Passacaglia V. Quasi Fuga VI. Finale

The Alexander String Quartet and William Kanengiser are represented by BesenArts LLC7 Delaney Place, Tenafly, NJ 07670 BesenArts.com

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ARTIST PROFILE

San Francisco Performances has presented William Kanengiser 13 times, beginning in 1986, as a member of the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet.

The Alexander String Quartet celebrated its 35th anniversary in 2016. The Quartet has been Ensemble-in-Residence since 1989 with San Francisco Performances, the result of a unique partnership between SF Performances and The Morrison Chamber Music Center at San Francisco State University. Starting in 1994, the Quartet joined with SF Performanc-es’ Music Historian-in-Residence, Robert Greenberg, to present the Saturday Morning Series exploring string quartet literature.

The Quartet has appeared on SF Perfor-mances’ mainstage Chamber Series many times, collaborating with such artists as so-prano Elly Ameling and mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato; clarinetists Richard Stoltzman, Joan Enric Lluna and Eli Eban; pianists James Tocco, Menahem Pressler, Jeremy Menuhin, and Joyce Yang; and composer Jake Heggie.

Recognized as one of America’s finest classical guitarists, William Kanengiser won First Prize in the 1987 Concert Artists Guild International Competition, as well as top awards in major guitar competitions in Toronto (1981) and Paris (1983). He has recorded four solo CD’s for the GSP label, ranging from classical to jazz to Caribbean to Near Eastern styles, and he was chosen to record Books 8 and 9 for the Suzuki Gui-tar Advanced Repertoire Series. In 2005 he released a live concert DVD, Classical Guitar and Beyond, for Mel Bay Recordings, which

also features Mr. Kanengiser’s talents as a comedian/mimic in his infamous GFA Imi-tation Show. A member of the Guitar Foun-dation of America Board of Trustees for many years, he is deeply committed to the GFA mission, and has taught, performed and conducted at a number of GFA conven-tions and symposia.

He currently holds the title of Associ-ate Professor of Classical Guitar at the USC Thornton School of Music, where he has taught since 1983. He was named Outstanding Graduate of the USC School of Music upon conferral of his Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees, in 1981 and 1983 re-spectively. In 2011 he received the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, and in 2013 the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Professional Endeavors. His deep interest in biomechanical, medical and psycho-logical concerns of musicians led him to co-found the Thornton Wellness Commit-tee in 2013, and he recently developed a new course entitled Musician’s Health and Wellness. He has given master classes at conservatories and guitar societies around the world, and produced two instructional videos, Effortless Classical Guitar and Clas-sical Guitar Mastery, for Hot Licks Video. He has served as featured performer and curator of the New York Guitar Marathon, as Artistic Director of the Laguna Beach Music Festival, and has given solo recit-als across the U.S., Mexico and Canada, as well as Japan, Australia, China, New Zea-land and throughout Europe. In June 2017 he will travel to Paraguay to work with Pu Rory, Berta Rojas’ youth guitar project.

As a founding member of the Los An-geles Guitar Quartet, Mr. Kanengiser has toured extensively throughout Asia, Eu-rope, and North America and recorded over a dozen CD’s. LAGQ was awarded a Grammy for Best Classical Crossover Re-cording in 2004 for their LAGQ’s Guitar Heroes CD. Their most recent CD, New Re-naissance, was released in March 2015. It features Mr. Kanengiser’s arrangements of Spanish Renaissance music, originally cre-ated for the stage production The Ingenious Don Quixote. Premiered by LAGQ with John Cleese (of Monty Python), the show is now being toured with comedian Phil Proctor of the Firesign Theater and was released as a live DVD on Mel Bay Recordings.

One of Mr. Kanengiser’s passions is find-ing ways to include student and semi-pro-fessional players in serious performance experiences through guitar orchestras. In 2006, Kyoto-based composer Shingo Fujii dedicated Concierto de Los Angeles for Guitar

and Guitar Orchestra to him, and in addi-tion to the U.S. premiere at the 2007 Guitar Foundation of America Convention, he has performed it over 30 times. LAGQ subse-quently commissioned another piece by Mr. Fujii entitled Shiki, and they recently pre-miered a new work by Andrew York called By Chants. Altogether, Mr. Kanengiser has invited over 2,000 guitarists onstage to per-form with him. He recently commissioned Sergio Assad to compose a new work for guitar and guitar orchestra, inspired by the experiences of refugees and immigrants around the globe, which was premiered in Fall 2018, as part of his new Diaspora com-missioning project. The 2019–2020 season sees the launch of British Invasion, a new col-laboration with the Alexander String Quar-tet, featuring works inspired by Sting, Led Zeppelin, the Beatles, and John Dowland.

The Alexander String Quartet has per-formed in the major music capitals of five continents, securing its standing among the world’s premier ensembles, and a ma-jor artistic presence in its home base of San Francisco, serving since 1989 as Ensemble-in-Residence of San Francisco Performanc-es and Directors of The Morrison Chamber Music Center at San Francisco State Univer-sity. Widely admired for its interpretations of Beethoven, Mozart, and Shostakovich, the quartet’s recordings have won inter-national critical acclaim. They have estab-lished themselves as important advocates of new music commissioning dozens of new works from composers including Jake Heg-gie, Cindy Cox, Augusta Read Thomas, Rob-ert Greenberg, Cesar Cano, Tarik O’Regan, Paul Siskind, and Pulitzer Prize-winner Wayne Peterson. Samuel Carl Adams’ new Quintet with Pillars was premiered and has been widely performed across the U.S. by the Alexander with pianist Joyce Yang, and will be introduced to European audiences in the 2020–2021 season.

The Alexander String Quartet’s annual calendar includes engagements at major halls throughout North America and Eu-rope. They have appeared at Lincoln Cen-ter, the 92nd Street Y, and the Metropolitan Museum; Jordan Hall; the Library of Con-gress; and chamber music societies and universities across the North American continent including Yale, Princeton, Stan-ford, Lewis and Clark, Pomona, UCLA, the Krannert Center, Purdue and many more. Recent overseas tours include the U.K., the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Italy, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, France, Greece, the Republic of Georgia, Argentina, Panamá, and the Philippines.

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Their visit to Poland’s Beethoven Easter Festival is beautifully captured in the 2017 award-winning documentary, Con Moto: The Alexander String Quartet.

Distinguished musicians with whom the Alexander String Quartet has collabo-rated include pianists Joyce Yang, Roger Woodward, Menachem Pressler, Marc-André Hamelin, and Jeremy Menuhin; clarinetists Joan Enric Lluna, Richard Stoltzman, and Eli Eban; soprano Elly Ameling; mezzo-sopranos Joyce DiDona-to and Kindra Scharich; violinist Midori; violist Toby Appel; 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 enjoys a close relationship with composer-lecturer Robert Greenberg, per-forming numerous lecture-concerts with him annually.

Recording for the FoghornClassics label, their release in 2019 of the late quartets of Mozart, has received critical acclaim. (“Exceptionally beautiful performances of some extraordinarily beautiful music.” —Fanfare), as did their 2018 release of Mozart’s piano quartets with Joyce Yang. (“These are by far, hands down and feet up, the most amazing performances of Mozart’s two piano quartets that have ever graced these ears” —Fanfare.) Other major releases have included the combined string quartet cy-cles of Bartók and Kodály (“If ever an album had ‘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); the Schumann and Brahms piano quintets with Joyce Yang (“passion-ate, soulful readings of two pinnacles of the chamber repertory” —The New York Times); and the Beethoven cycle (“A land-mark journey through the greatest of all quartet cycles” —Strings Magazine). Their catalog also includes the Shostakovich cy-cle, Mozart’s Ten Famous Quartets, and the Mahler song cycles in new transcriptions by Zakarias Grafilo.

The Alexander String Quartet formed in New York City in 1981, capturing inter-national attention as the first American quartet to win the London (now Wigmore) International String Quartet Competition in 1985. The quartet has received honor-ary degrees from Allegheny College and Saint Lawrence University, and Presiden-tial medals from Baruch College (CUNY). The Alexander plays on a matched set of instruments made in San Francisco by Francis Kuttner, known as the Ellen M. Eg-ger quartet.

PROGRAM NOTES

William Kanengiser writes:In tonight’s program, I join the Alexan-

der String Quartet to pay tribute to a group of English musicians who conquered the musical world with their revolutionary explorations. From the Elizabethan lute-nist John Dowland to the pop/rock icons Sting, The Beatles, and Led Zeppelin, these artists made a lasting impact far from the shores of their small island. Their music served as inspiration for a set of compo-

sitions for guitar and string quartet by some of the most talented composers writ-ing today, and it is especially appropriate that the guitar sits squarely at the center of these works, as the plucked string was the primary musical voice of these British innovators.

Born in Havana in 1939, Léo Brouwer is now regarded as the preeminent contem-porary composer for the guitar, although he has also written extensively for orches-tra, choir, and chamber ensembles, and has composed over 50 film scores. Coming of age in post-Revolutionary Cuba, he was entranced not only by classical and avant-garde music, but also by the popular mu-sic of the day; The Beatles, in particular, were an important influence on his musi-cal personality. When a Cuban Minister of Culture undertook a program of avoiding “Western” influence, Léo found his music, as well as his beloved Beatles, banned in his homeland. As a reaction, he arranged seven Beatles classics in 1976, grouping them as Beatlerianas, which have been scored for guitar duo, guitar with chamber orches-tra, and the present version for guitar and string quartet.

The Alexander String Quartet and I have chosen three of these settings, all of which contain enough new and extrapolated ma-terial to straddle the distinction between pure arrangement and new composition. The three pieces also share a commonality in theme: they all are pieces that The Beatles wrote in their mature period, capturing memories of their early years growing up in Liverpool. Eleanor Rigby is a heartbreak-ing character study of the loneliness of ano-nymity and old age, and Brouwer interjects brisk passagework and a quasi-fugal exposi-tion of the tune before the more familiar set-ting emerges. She’s Leaving Home captures the poignant moment of a daughter leaving the nest, from both her and her mother’s perspective; Brouwer begins it with a fluid introduction and a swinging coda in his delicate treatment. And Penny Lane gives a vivid portrait of a day in the life on the bus-tling streets of Liverpool; Brouwer captures the energy of the scene with a vibrant syn-copated introduction and crisp rhythmic countermelodies to the jaunty tune.

John Dowland was the undisputed mas-ter of the Elizabethan lute, and through his vast catalogue of compositions and fre-quent travels abroad, could be said to be one of the first “rock stars” of the plucked string. One of his most popular pieces is his Frog Galliard, which may have been written in reference to one of Elizabeth I’s French suit-

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ors, the Duc d’Alençon. Dowland also set the piece to text in his lute song Now, O Now, I Needs Must Part. (The triple meter and cycli-cal harmony of the piece have suggested to some that Herr Pachelbel might have lifted it for his famous Canon in D theme.) The con-temporary composer Ian Krouse used this theme as a springboard for a major work, first written for two guitars under the title Portrait of a Young Woman, and then re-cast for solo guitar and string quartet (it was later re-arranged for four guitars, and I re-corded it with the Los Angeles Guitar Quar-tet on our New Renaissance album).

Ian Krouse, a Distinguished Professor of Composition at UCLA, is prolific and lauded composer of symphonies, chamber works and song cycles. (He is most recog-nized for his magnum opus, Armenian Re-quiem.) But as a guitarist himself, he is par-ticularly associated with that instrument, and especially through his long and fruit-ful collaboration with LAGQ. In setting the Frog Galliard, Krouse created a two-part work that deconstructs, reconstructs, and reimagines the theme both melodically and harmonically. Krouse also used the conceit of limiting himself to the seven notes of the key of E Major, to see how much contrast and formal development could be achieved within that constraint: hence the title Music in Four Sharps. The first half of the piece owes a debt to Benjamin Britten’s masterwork for solo guitar, Nocturnal after John Dowland, Opus 70, which also happens to be a setting of a Dowland theme (Come, Heavy Sleep); like the Nocturnal, Music in Four Sharps presents a set of variations that reveals the theme at the end, rather than at the outset. While the statement of the theme was the endpoint for Britten’s set-ting, for Krouse it marks the middle point. From then on, the piece becomes a quasi-minimalistic fracturing and rhythmic overlay of snippets of the tune that gradu-ally builds to a searing climax. As the dust settles, the theme returns as a faint echo, fading out a niente.

Sting (born Gordon Sumner) has re-defined what a pop artist can be over his multifaceted career; he is a rock star, a jazz musician, a world-music advocate, an early music aficionado, an actor, and now, a Broadway playwright and headliner in his musical The Last Ship. Along the way, he created a catalogue of songs that have become anthems for a whole generation. In 2013, the contemporary Serbian com-poser Dušan Bogdanović undertook the project of setting six of Sting’s tunes into Prism: Six Songs by Sting for solo guitar

and string quartet. The genesis of the col-laboration was through Sting’s explora-tion into Elizabethan lute and the music of John Dowland in his project Songs from the Labyrinth. There he worked with the Croatian lutenist Edin Karamazov, who is a frequent performer of Dušan’s music. Edin commissioned Dušan to set the songs, and with Sting’s blessing, the pieces have been performed and recorded. Tonight’s perfor-mance will mark the North American pre-miere of the set.

Bogdanović chose six songs that high-light the stylistic and emotional range of Sting’s songwriting, in adaptations that are even more extrapolated and re-com-posed than the aforementioned Beatles settings by Brouwer. Dušan’s iconic style comes through clearly with a penchant for odd-meters, rich harmonies, poly meter, and jazz textures, making it a perfect foil to Sting’s pop-infused multistylistic ap-proach. The simplest of the settings is Ev-ery Breath You Take, with the time signa-ture set to a more Balkan 7/8, and a cello ostinato reminiscent of the Prelude of Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1. Next is Message in a Bottle, churning with an African-inspired polyrhythm, which climaxes in a highly syncopated 12/8 groove. Shape of My Heart is a duet for cello and guitar, with a mourn-ful, bluesy setting of this lovely ballad. Fields of Gold is a dialogue between guitar and the string quartet, with luscious har-monies over the hymn-like melody. Des-ert Rose begins with a short guitar solo in a North African style, which unfolds into the ostinato of the tune, again re-imagined in 7/8. The final movement is the rock an-them Roxanne, here set as a passacaglia that becomes increasingly complex, poly-tonal, and polyrhythmic, culminating in a frenetic post-modern be-bop coda.

Although not a household name, John Duarte was an influential force in the de-velopment of the classical guitar in the 20th Century. A noted critic, scholar, recording annotator, and competition juror, he was a close personal friend of the Spanish vir-tuoso Andrés Segovia, and one of John Wil-liams’ primary instructors. He composed over 150 works for guitar, as well as editing and arranging works by Manuel de Falla and Bach. By far his most popular piece, the English Suite, Opus 31, captures the essence of British 20th Century pastoral music, in a charming neo-Renaissance style that fully explores the guitar’s resonant potential. The piece was written in 1962 and carries the dedication: “To Andrés Segovia and his wife on the occasion of their marriage.”

Cast in three movements, English Suite begins with a Prelude that evokes the pro-cessional to Segovia’s wedding. A slow and lyrical middle section features a gradu-ally unfolding theme that hints at the exchange of vows, and the opening mate-rial returns as a recessional march. The second movement, Folk Song, explores a simple pentatonic melody that weaves up and down the guitar’s range, then moves into unexpected tonal centers on undulat-ing chordal waves, including a nod to the Spanish music of his dedicatee. The final Round Dance is a jig in 9/8, diverted by a brief foray into a plaintive chorale, and it ends satisfyingly in a rousing flourish.

Eric Bromberger writes on Britten’s String Quartet No. 3:

In 1973 Benjamin Britten—frail and fac-ing a heart operation—composed his final opera, Death in Venice. Based on Thomas Mann’s 1913 novella, the opera summed up many of the themes of Britten’s artistic career: as the aging novelist Aschenbach embarks on a quest for spiritual redemp-tion in a city assaulted by the plague, he is torn between his search for beauty and the corrupting force of his own physical desires. Two years later, in the fall of 1975, Britten composed his String Quartet No. 3. It would be (except for a short choral piece for children) his final composition, for Brit-ten died of heart failure the following year. The Amadeus Quartet gave the official premiere of this quartet on December 19, 1976, two weeks after the composer’s death, though Britten had heard this music played through shortly after he completed it.

In the course of composing the quar-tet, Britten returned to Venice—a city he loved—and in fact he composed the quar-tet’s final movement there. Inevitably, that visit reawakened memories of his opera, and this quartet makes explicit references to Death in Venice: specific themes, key re-lationships, and mottos that had appeared in the opera return in the quartet. This all raises a question: does one need to know Death in Venice to understand the Quartet No. 3? The answer to that question must be no—this quartet will stand on its own mer-its—but it may help to know that this was Britten’s final instrumental work and that it draws on music about a spiritual quest.

Led Zeppelin still stands as one of the most emblematic and innovative rock groups in history, and the guitar styl-ings of Jimmy Page puts him firmly in the

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Kanengiser Notes continued from page 5

pantheon of “Guitar Gods” alongside Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton. But while they are most known for their commercial hits Stairway to Heaven and Whole Lotta Love, they experimented quite a bit with world-music elements, complex rhythms, and in-novative structure, redefining what rock music could be. A “deep track” from their Led Zeppelin 3 release was Friends, an Indi-an-inspired blues filled with odd meters, bent pitches, and exotic scales. This tune served as the starting point for one of Ian Krouse’s most ambitious works, Labyrinth on a Theme of Led Zeppelin. Originally com-posed for LAGQ in 1994, it was rearranged

for solo guitar and string quartet in 2019 expressly for this concert and receives its world premiere in tonight’s performance.

The piece begins with a note-for-note transcription of the original Friends track, complete with strummed open-tuned chords on the steel-string guitar and mi-crotonal bends evoking Robert Plant’s bluesy vocal line. After a rousing cadence, the texture becomes ominous, with rapid string passagework punctuated by a bot-tle-neck slide statement of the theme. This gives way to a furious exposition of the oc-tatonic scale, in a “call-and-response” blues form, culminating in a chorale-like reca-pitulation of the theme. Part 3 begins by introducing an up-tempo rock-style blues,

which become increasingly raucous and is punctuated by an improvised slide guitar solo. Without warning, a sudden stop ush-ers in Part 4, a slow and haunting passaca-glia over the blues progression. The cello then begins Part 5 with an austere state-ment of the theme, as the subject of what will become a full-blown fugal exposition. Previous elements interrupt the imitative texture with increasing intensity, until the opening theme returns, this time informed by the transfigurations of the previous ma-terial. A final swelling crescendo erupts in the finale, as the Labyrinth returns to the open C Major chord where it began.

Notes by William Kanengiser