in the old style summer warmth

WEEK ONE

IN THE OLD STYLESunday Afternoon, August 5, 2018 at 3:00Spa Little Theatre

SUMMER WARMTHTuesday Evening, August 7, 2018 at 8:00Spa Little Theatre

WWW.SPAC.ORG WWW.CHAMBERMUSICSOCIETY.ORG

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the Saratoga Performing Arts Center’s 2018 Season! As I begin my second summer in Saratoga, I am so grateful for the community’s enthusiastic embrace of our new initiatives, new partnerships and new collaborations. This season you can expect

exhilarating performances from our beloved resident companies, the return of new “classics” like “Live at the Jazz Bar,” “SPAC on Stage” and “Caffe Lena @ SPAC,” and the Saratoga debuts of the National Ballet of Cuba and Trinity Irish Dance Company.

SPAC and its home, the Spa State Park, represent a perfect confluence of manmade beauty and natural beauty and it is the inspiration of place that made us want to explore the interplay between the natural world and the world of art, the nexus between Art & Cosmos. This year, we launch the Out of this World festival, kicked off by a performance of Holst’s The Planets with spectacular NASA Space footage, followed by star-gazing around the reflecting pool. Audiences will engage with roaming astronomers, experience virtual reality space expeditions and even attend a special children’s chamber concert that examines the creative connection between Einstein and Mozart. And we introduce a new SPAC Speakers series with thought-provoking “stars” from the worlds of space, science and the arts.

There are so many other new experiences and surprises in store.We welcome you to a new summer of discovery.

Elizabeth Sobol PRESIDENT AND CEO

A MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT

CMS AT SPAC

Dear Friends,

On behalf of the Saratoga Performing Arts Center Board of Directors, thank you for your support and attendance at this performance. The strength and progress of SPAC has always depended on the contributions of its audiences and the many sponsors, donors and partners who recognize SPAC’s impact on the cultural and economic life of this region. Thanks to you, as we lift the curtain on our season, we do so in a strong position financially, artistically and as an institution.

Last season, we welcomed Elizabeth Sobol to Saratoga Springs as SPAC’s new president and CEO. In less than two years, Elizabeth has implemented a new vision and path for the Center with innovative programming and an increased emphasis on affordability, accessibility and community outreach. SPAC’s reduced $30 amphitheater ticket and the expanded Fidelity Kids in Free program welcomed hundreds of new guests who had previously never been to the Center. Educational programming such as Classical Kids, Summer Nights at SPAC and the Performance Project have expanded exponentially, reaching more than 23,000 students in over 70 schools. These are just a few of the successes that we will continue to build upon.

Looking ahead to the future, I’d also like to extend a special thanks to New York State for its capital investment of $1.75 million to rehabilitate and upgrade SPAC’s amphitheater ramps, lighting and other high priority infrastructure. The new project is slated to be completed in advance of the 2019 season and is part of the Board’s and SPAC President and CEO Elizabeth Sobol’s vision to strengthen our partnerships and make critical investments into our facilities for generations to come.

As always, your presence and support is what makes this season possible. We invite you to join us often this summer to experience world-class artistry in our world-class venue.

Ron Riggi CHAIRMAN

A MESSAGE FROM THE CHAIRMAN

CMS AT SPAC

GILLES VONSATTEL, piano SCHUMANN QUARTETNICOLAS DAUTRICOURT, violin ERIK SCHUMANN, violin KEN SCHUMANN, violin LIISA RANDALU, viola MARK SCHUMANN, cello

Suite in Old Style for Violin and Piano (1972)

Pastorale: Moderato Ballet: Allegro Minuet: Tempo di menuetto Fugue: Allegro Pantomime: Andantino

DAUTRICOURT, VONSATTEL

Quintet in G minor for Piano, Two Violins, Viola, and Cello, Op. 57 (1940)

Prelude: Lento— Fugue: Adagio Scherzo: Allegretto Intermezzo: Lento— Finale: Allegretto

VONSATTEL, DAUTRICOURT, K. SCHUMANN,

RANDALU, M. SCHUMANN

—INTERMISSION—

Quartet in C-sharp minor for Strings, Op. 131 (1825-26)

Adagio ma non troppo e molto espressivo— Allegro molto vivace— Allegro moderato—Adagio— Andante ma non troppo e molto cantabile— Presto— Adagio quasi un poco andante— Allegro

E. SCHUMANN, K. SCHUMANN, RANDALU, M. SCHUMANN

ALFRED SCHNITTKE(1934-1998)

DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH(1906-1975)

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN

(1770-1827)

IN THE OLD STYLE Sunday Afternoon, August 5, 2018 at 3:00 Spa Little Theatre

PLEASE TURN OFF CELL PHONES AND OTHER ELECTRONIC DEVICES.Photographing, sound recording, or videotaping this event is prohibited.

CMS AT SPAC SUNDAY, AUGUST 5, 2018

NOTES ON THE PROGRAM

ALFRED SCHNITTKE Born November 24, 1934 in

Engels, Russia. Died August 3, 1998 in

Hamburg, Germany. Composed in 1972.

Duration: 16 minutes

Suite in Old Style for Violin and Piano

Alfred Schnittke was born on November 24, 1934 in Engels on the Volga, in the Russian steppes, 500 miles southeast of Moscow. He showed enough musical ability to receive an audition at the Central Music School for Gifted Children in Moscow in May 1941, but the following month the Germans invaded Russia and the opportunity for early training vanished. In 1945, after the war, Harry Schnittke, a journalist, got a job on a German-language newspaper in Vienna published by the occupying Russian forces. He brought his family to the city the following year, and there 12-year-old Alfred had the world of music opened to him through his first piano lessons and attendance at operas and concerts. The city of Mozart and Schubert inspired Schnittke’s earliest attempts at composition.

When the Viennese paper ceased operations in 1948, the Schnittkes returned to Russia, where Alfred gained admittance to the October Revolution Music College in Moscow; in the autumn of 1953, he entered the Moscow Conservatory. His early

works gained him a reputation as a modernist, and he was accepted as a member of the Composers’ Union following his graduation in 1958 as much to tame his avant-garde tendencies as to promote his creative work. He tried writing Party-sanctioned pieces during the next few years—the 1959 cantata Songs of War and Peace was his first published score—but the fit was uncomfortable on both sides, and during the 1960s and early 1970s, when performances of his works were officially discouraged, he devoted most of his creative energy to scoring three or four films a year. In 1962, he started teaching part-time at the Moscow Conservatory (the Soviet officials would not grant him a full-time appointment), leaving little opportunity for original creative work. In 1972, he resigned from the conservatory to devote himself to composition.

Schnittke composed prolifically during the following years, and by the early 1980s he had won an international reputation. In 1989, he accepted a grant that allowed him to live in Berlin for a year, after which he settled in Hamburg. During his later years, Schnittke was invited regularly to attend performances of his works from Tokyo to Leipzig to Santa Fe, but he was limited in traveling because of allergies, migraines, kidney disease, and three serious strokes suffered between 1985 and 1994, though he

Shostakovich’s mother, Sofia Vasilievna, was a skilled pianist who studied at the St. Petersburg Conservatory and taught the instrument professionally. She passed her talent onto her offspring—her oldest child, Maria, followed in her footsteps, and Sofia began Dmitri’s lessons when he was nine. (Her

DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH Born September 25, 1906 in St. Petersburg. Died August 9, 1975 in Moscow. Composed in 1940. Premiered on November 23, 1940 in

Moscow by the Beethoven Quartet and the composer.


Quintet in G minor for Piano, Two Violins, Viola, and Cello, Op. 57


proved remarkably resilient in carrying on his creative work until his death in Hamburg on August 3, 1998.

In developing his own distinctive musical speech, Schnittke sifted through a wide range of music, old and new, and came to understand that he could forge a style of personal expression that could encompass, perhaps might even be formed from, references to other music and other ages. “A mixture of styles which are worked with as they are,” he explained, “not in the sense of a synthesis but as ‘poly-stylism,’ in which the various idioms appear to speak as individual keys on a large keyboard.” Though clearly products of the late 20th century, Schnittke’s compositions are essentially old-fashioned and Romantic in trying to create a sense of musical journey, of emotions excited, of memories evoked, of communication from an insightful author to an attentive mind and heart.

The Suite in Old Style was composed in 1972 for violin and keyboard (piano or harpsichord), and arranged in 1987 for viola d’amore and chamber orchestra. (Vladimir Spivakov and Mikhail Milman

made a transcription for chamber orchestra alone the following year.) The work is in a mock-Baroque style that places it in the line of such earlier musical homages to bygone eras as Tchaikovsky’s Mozartiana Suite, Stravinsky’s Pulcinella, and Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin. Schnittke’s lilting Pastorale glows with a sunny sweetness that recalls tender movements by Vivaldi and Handel; the music stops before it reaches its apparent final cadence chord. The Ballet is nimble and bustling, with a brief central section that is more veiled in expression. The Minuet is slow in tempo and surprisingly lugubrious, giving it the effect of a sad lullaby. The Fugue is more a jaunty contrapuntal dialogue than a formally developed example of its genre. The closing Pantomime, a sort of modern Musical Joke, tosses satiric gibes at the banalities of some lesser Baroque music. Some dissonant harmonies escape to mark the movement’s mid-point, after which the banal music resumes unflustered. Like the Pastorale, the Pantomime ends before it makes it to the expected final resolution. �

third and last child, Zoya, became a veterinarian.) Dmitri displayed a quick affinity for the piano, and he was placed in Glyaser’s Music School after only a year of study at home. Three years later, in 1919 (and just two years after the revolution, which his family supported wholeheartedly), Shostakovich entered the Petrograd Conservatory as a piano student of Leonid Nikolayev; he graduated in 1924 as a highly accomplished performer.

Shostakovich always retained his love of the piano and played throughout his life whenever he could, but the lack of practice time prevented him from performing much music other than his own. The composer’s student Samari Savshinsky described him as “an outstanding artist and performer. The crystalline clarity and precision of thought, the almost ascetic absence of embellishment, the precise rhythm, technical perfection, and very personal timbre he produced at the piano made all Shostakovich’s piano playing individual in the highest degree.... Those who remember his performance of Beethoven’s mighty ‘Hammerklavier’ Sonata, followed by a number of Chopin pieces, can only regret that his talent as a pianist was never fully developed or applied.” After years of prompting, the Beethoven String Quartet, the ensemble that premiered all of Shostakovich’s 15 quartets except No. 1, finally convinced the composer-pianist to write a Quintet for Piano

and Strings that would allow them to perform together. Shostakovich duly composed the work during the summer of 1940, and gave its premiere with the Beethoven Quartet in the Small Hall of the Moscow Conservatory on November 23rd during a Festival of Soviet Music. The quintet was greeted with universal acclaim, which was officially recognized when its composer was presented with the Stalin Prize, the highest award then granted in the Soviet Union for artistic work.The quintet opens with a dramatic statement by the piano (keyboard and strings are held in opposition throughout) that is soon taken over by the strings. The center section is occupied by a lighter strain, a sort of melancholy shadow waltz that is brought to a climax to lead to the return of the dramatic opening music by the full ensemble to close the movement. The second movement is a tightly woven fugue of somber countenance that traces the form of an arch, beginning and ending softly and reaching a peak of intensity in its middle regions. The Scherzo that follows is, according to Andrew Huth, “cheerfully poised between spiky wit and downright bad manners.” The Intermezzo contains the expressive heart of the quintet. Its expansive, deeply felt melodic lines are borne along by the heartbeat tread of its incessant bass line, and, like the fugue, it reaches its emotional highpoint near its center. The Finale is a large sonata form built on an airy, widely spaced main theme and a rather coarse contrasting strain. The development section includes a reminiscence of the dramatic theme from the Prelude, but optimism returns with the recapitulation, and the quintet closes in a genial, if somewhat subdued mood. �

THE QUINTET WAS GREETED WITH UNIVERSAL ACCLAIM, WHICH WAS OFFICIALLY RECOGNIZED WHEN ITS COMPOSER WAS PRESENTED WITH THE STALIN PRIZE



On November 9, 1822, Prince Nikolas Galitzin, a devotee of Beethoven’s music and an amateur cellist, wrote from St. Petersburg asking the composer for “one, two, or three quartets, for which labor I will be glad to pay you whatever amount you think proper.” After a hiatus of a dozen years, Beethoven was eager to return to the medium of the string quartet, and he immediately accepted the commission and set the fee of 50 ducats for each work, a high price but one readily accepted by Galitzin. Though badgered regularly by the Russian Prince (“I am really impatient to have a new quartet of yours. Nevertheless, I beg you not to mind, and to be guided in this only by your inspiration and the disposition of your mind”), Beethoven, exhausted by his labors on the Ninth Symphony in 1823-24, could not complete the Quartet in E-flat major (Op. 127) until February 1825; the second quartet (A minor, Op. 132) was finished five months later; and the third (B-flat major, Op. 130) was written between July and November, during one of the few periods of relatively good health Beethoven enjoyed in his last decade.

Fulfilling the commission for Galitzin, however, did not nearly exhaust the fount of Beethoven’s creativity in the realm of the string

quartet. Karl Holz, the composer’s amanuensis and the second violinist in Ignaz Schuppanzigh’s quartet, which gave the first public performances of Galitzin’s quartets, recorded, “During the composition of the three works for Prince Galitzin, Beethoven was assailed with such an overwhelming flow of ideas that he went against his will, as it were, to write the Quartets in C-sharp minor and F major.” Beethoven began sketching the C-sharp minor Quartet in December 1825, immediately after Op. 130 was completed, and worked on it during the following months at his flat in the Schwarzspanierhaus, near the site of the present Votiv-Kirche. By May 1826, the piece was sufficiently advanced for him to begin offering it to publishers, and he sent inquiries to the firms of Schott in Mainz, Schlessinger in Paris, and Probst in Leipzig. The quartet was finished in July, and accepted by Schott the following month, but the final details of the score’s publication were not fully settled until March 24, 1827, just two days before Beethoven’s death.

The C-sharp minor Quartet may well be Beethoven’s boldest piece of musical architecture—seven movements played without pause, six distinct main key areas, 31 tempo changes, and a veritable encyclopedia of Classical formal principles. Though it passes beyond the Fifth Symphony, Fidelio, and Egmont in its harmonic sophistication and structural audacity, this quartet shares with those works the sense of struggle to victory, of subjecting

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN Born December 16, 1770 in Bonn. Died March 26, 1827 in Vienna.

Composed in 1825-26.


Quartet in C-sharp minor for Strings, Op. 131

the spirit to such states of emotional unrest as strengthen it for winning the ultimate triumph. The opening movement is a spacious, profoundly expressive fugue that, according to Richard Wagner, “reveals the most melancholy sentiment in music.” The following Allegro offers emotional respite as well as structural contrast. A tiny movement (Allegro moderato—Adagio) serves as the bridge to the expressive heart (and formal center) of the quartet, an expansive set

of variations. The fifth movement alternates two strains of buoyantly aerial music. The Adagio in chordal texture is less an independent movement than an introduction and foil for the finale, whose vast and densely packed sonata form (woven with references to the fugue theme of the first movement) summarizes the overall progress of this stupendous quartet in its move from darkness and struggle toward light and spiritual renewal. �

© 2018 Dr. Richard E. Rodda


Trio in A major for Piano, Violin, and Cello, Hob. XV:18 (1794) Allegro moderato Andante— Allegro

WU HAN, E. SCHUMANN, M. SCHUMANN

Quartet in E-flat major for Strings, Op. 51 (1878-79) Allegro ma non troppo Dumka (Elegia): Andante con moto—Vivace Romanze: Andante con moto Finale: Allegro assai

E. SCHUMANN, K. SCHUMANN, RANDALU,

M. SCHUMANN

—INTERMISSION—

Quintet in A major for Piano, Violin, Viola, Cello, and Bass, D. 667, Op. 114, "Trout" (1819) Allegro vivace Andante Scherzo: Presto Andantino (Tema con variazioni) Finale: Allegro giusto

VONSATTEL, DAUTRICOURT, RANDALU, M. SCHUMANN, CONYERS

JOSEPH HAYDN(1732-1809)

ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK(1841-1904)

FRANZ SCHUBERT (1797-1828)

SUMMER WARMTH Tuesday Evening, August 7, 2018 at 8:00 Spa Little Theatre

GILLES VONSATTEL, piano SCHUMANN QUARTETWU HAN, piano ERIK SCHUMANN, violin NICOLAS DAUTRICOURT, violin KEN SCHUMANN, violinJOSEPH CONYERS, double bass LIISA RANDALU, viola MARK SCHUMANN, cello

PLEASE TURN OFF CELL PHONES AND OTHER ELECTRONIC DEVICES.Photographing, sound recording, or videotaping this event is prohibited.

CMS AT SPAC TUESDAY, AUGUST 7, 2018

The history of the piano is far more than the mere recounting of the mechanical and technical development of an instrument—it is a virtual microcosm of the progress of modern Western civilization. The first keyboard instrument capable of responding to the varying touch of the player was the gravicembalo col piano e forte (harpsichord with soft and loud), invented in Florence in 1709 by Bartolomeo Cristofori. Cristofori’s instrument, whose sound was activated by a hammer thrown against a string according to the force of the pressure applied at the keyboard, allowed for gradations of dynamics that were impossible on the plucked-string harpsichord and was well suited to the growing demand for music that would more intimately mirror the passionate expression of the performer. It took Cristofori more than a decade to perfect the mechanism and several more years for various manufacturers to establish their trade in the instruments, but by the time Johann Sebastian Bach

played one of the new fortepianos on his visit to the court of Frederick the Great at Berlin in 1747, he was able to declare his enthusiasm for it. During the 1760s and 1770s, the piano slowly began to supplant the harpsichord; Mozart acquired his first fortepiano in 1781, the year he moved to Vienna.

The three factors that most strongly guided the full acceptance of the piano—one political, one social, one commercial—swung into place during the closing decades of the 18th century. The political aspect involved nothing less than the French Revolution, the cataclysmic event that hurled Europe into the modern egalitarian world. France had long been the most important country for the production of harpsichords, and the disruption of its commerce effectively limited it as a source of musical instruments. Indeed, the revolutionaries made it one of their goals to destroy every harpsichord they could find as a symbolic smashing of the old aristocracy—the new times in France called for a new musical instrument.

The social reason promoting the acceptance of the piano, one not unrelated to the upheavals in France, was the rise of the middle class, the new gentry who had both leisure time and the money to enjoy

NOTES ON THE PROGRAM

JOSEPH HAYDN Born March 31, 1732 in Rohrau,

Lower Austria. Died May 31, 1809 in Vienna.

Composed in 1794.


Trio in A major for Piano, Violin, and Cello, Hob. XV:18


it. In those days before recordings and broadcasts, music could only be heard at the instant and place it was produced, so the demand for a musical instrument as the center of home entertainment—for the fashionable piano—mounted. (For those interested in learning about the social history of the piano, Arthur Loesser’s delightful book Men, Women & Pianos is highly recommended.)

The success of the piano as an item of commerce followed, of course, the increased demand. By the turn of the 19th century, the instrument had become an important commercial product, amenable to being mass-manufactured and sold at reduced prices to a potentially enormous market. Profits soared, and so did the infestation of pianos.

The early steps in the piano’s progress may be traced in Joseph Haydn’s compositions for keyboard trio. His earliest trios for keyboard, violin, and cello date from the mid-1750s. These pieces, small in scale and courtly in expression, as befit the taste and situation of Count Ferdinand Maximilian von Morzin, his employer at the time, were clearly intended for the harpsichord,

“accompanied,” as the style of the time dictated, by violin and cello. After joining the Esterházy musical establishment in 1761, Haydn turned from the traditional keyboard trio to the genres of composition for the curious baryton, a string instrument descended from the old viol family that served as the principal performance outlet for Prince Nikolaus. Haydn created 175 works for baryton, some 126 of them as trios for the instrument joined by viola and cello. By the time he returned to the keyboard trio in 1782, the fortepiano had become the instrument of choice for a burgeoning band of musical amateurs, and his second foray into trio composition was undertaken to help satisfy that clientele’s lucrative demand for new material. Haydn’s trios of the 1780s, then, were tailored to the piano rather than the harpsichord, and were generally lighter in style, simpler of execution, and more compact in form (i.e., three movements rather than four) than his contemporaneous string quartets, though they make few concessions to the dilettante and still exhibit the same sophisticated thematic manipulation and daring harmonic invention that mark his larger instrumental works of the time. The third and final group of Haydn’s trios, comprising more than a third of his 45 works in the form, dates from the 1790s, the years of his London ventures and his greatest international acclaim.

As was typical of the 18th-century genre, Haydn’s A major Piano

THE TRIO EXHIBITS A MASTERY OF FORM AND STYLE AND A BREADTH OF EXPRESSION REMINISCENT OF HAYDN'S PEERLESS LONDON SYMPHONIES

With the lightning success of his Slavonic Dances of 1878, Antonín Dvořák became one of his day’s most popular—and busiest—composers. Just three years before, when he was in such dire financial straits that the city officials of Prague certified his poverty, he entered some of his works in a competition in Vienna for struggling composers. He won, and the distinguished jury members, including Johannes Brahms and the powerful critic Eduard Hanslick, took on their young Czech colleague as

a protégé. Brahms insisted that his publisher, Fritz Simrock, issue some of Dvořák’s music and commission a new work from him. The result of Simrock’s order, modeled on Brahms’s Hungarian Dances, was the Slavonic Dances, which, immediately upon their publication in August 1878, created a sensation. Demands for more of Dvořák’s music came from publishers, conductors, chamber music ensembles, choral societies, and soloists. In February 1879, he wrote a Festival March for the celebration of the Silver Wedding Anniversary of the Emperor and Empress of Austria at the Prague National Theater; by March, the E-flat String Quartet (Op. 51) was finished; he delivered his setting of the 149th Psalm to the Prague Choral Society that same month; and the Mazurek for Violin and Orchestra (Op. 49) was premiered in Prague on March 29th.

ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK Born September 8, 1841 in

Nelahozeves, Bohemia. Died May 1, 1904 in Prague.

Composed in 1878-79.

Premiered on July 29, 1879 in Berlin by the Joachim Quartet.


Quartet in E-flat major for Strings, Op. 51


Trio, composed in 1794, during his second residency in London, entrusts the bulk of the musical argument to the keyboard, with the strings often relegated to augmenting and doubling roles. Though the piece was written for the growing market of British and Continental musical amateurs, the trio exhibits a mastery of form and style and a breadth of expression reminiscent of Haydn's peerless

London symphonies. The work opens with a genial sonata-form movement built almost entirely from the angular but smoothly flowing motive given in imitation at the outset by the piano. The Andante juxtaposes melancholy and contented strains in a three-part form (A–B–A). The movement ends on an inconclusive harmony that lead directly to the finale, a jokey rondo of Gypsy persuasion. �

Early in July 1819, Franz Schubert left the heat and dust of Vienna for a walking tour of Upper Austria with his friend, the baritone Johann Michael Vogl. The destination of the journey was Steyr, a small town

in the foothills of the Austrian Alps south of Linz and some 80 miles west of Vienna where Vogl was born and to which he returned every summer. Schubert enjoyed the venture greatly, writing home to his brother, Ferdinand, that the countryside was “inconceivably beautiful.” In Steyr, Vogl introduced the composer to the village’s chief patron of the arts, Sylvester Paumgartner, a wealthy amateur cellist and an

FRANZ SCHUBERT Born January 31, 1797 in Vienna. Died November 19, 1828 in Vienna.

Composed in 1819.


Quintet in A major for Piano, Violin, Viola, Cello, and Bass, D. 667, Op. 114, “Trout”

As with other of Dvořák’s works of that period, the E-flat Quartet is deeply imbued with the spirit and style of the music of his native Bohemia. The quartet opens with a serene main theme that acquires some dance-like decorating figures reminiscent of the polka as it unfolds. The second theme, initiated by the viola, is structured in short, simple phrases, like a folksong. The development section is mainly devoted to transformations of the main theme and its associated polka rhythm. The themes are reversed in the recapitulation, with the second subject, given this time by the violins in octaves, coming first and the clear restatement of the principal subject held in reserve until the coda.

The dumka was a traditional Slavic (especially Ukrainian) folk ballad of meditative character that often described heroic deeds. It acquired various musical characteristics in

different cultures (Dvořák once reportedly asked the noted folklorist Ludvík Kuba at a chance coffee-house encounter, “Just what is a dumka, anyway?”), so he felt justified in making his own formal interpretation of it. For the second movement of the E-flat Quartet, he used a form of alternating sections of slow thoughtful music and fast dancing music. The Romanze is arranged along a formal arch—gentle and nocturnal at beginning and end, more animated near its center. The theme of the sonata-form Finale is based on a boisterous Czech dance, the skacna. The movement’s second theme is a folkish melody of initially somber cast that is humored into a happier mood as it entwines with the main theme in the development. The recall of the themes in the recapitulation and a rousing coda bring this splendid quartet to an exuberant close. �



ardent admirer of Schubert’s music. Paumgartner’s home was the site of frequent local musical events—private musical parties were held in the first floor music room as well as in a large salon upstairs, decorated with musical emblems and portraits of composers, that also housed his considerable collection of instruments and scores. Albert Stadler, in his reminiscences of Schubert, reported that Paumgartner asked the composer for a new piece that could be performed at his soirées, and stipulated that the instrumentation be the same as that of Hummel’s Grande Quintour of 1802 (piano, violin, viola, cello, bass). The work, he insisted, must also include a movement based on one of his favorite songs, Schubert’s own Die Forelle (The Trout) of 1817. Schubert, undoubtedly flattered, welcomed the opportunity, and started sketching the work immediately. He completed the piece soon after returning to Vienna, and sent the score to Paumgartner as soon as it was finished. There are no further records of the “Trout” Quintet until 1829, a year after the composer’s death, when Ferdinand sold his brother’s manuscript to

the publisher Josef Czerny, who promptly issued the score with this statement: “We deem it our duty to draw the musical public’s attention to this work by the unforgettable composer.” In his study of Schubert, Alfred Einstein wrote that the “Trout” Quintet is music “we cannot help but love.” It is a work brimming with good-natured, Biedermeier Gemütlichkeit, perfectly suited to the intimate nature of Paumgartner’s musical gatherings, closer in spirit to serenade than to sonata, and rarely hinting at the darker, Romantic emotions that Schubert explored in his later instrumental works. The first of the quintet’s five movements is an expansive, richly lyrical sonata form whose recapitulation begins in the subdominant key, one of Schubert’s favorite instrumental techniques for extending the harmonic range and color of his music. The Andante is a two-part form, a sort of extended song comprising two large stanzas. Following the delightful Scherzo comes the set of variations on Die Forelle, which lent the quintet its sobriquet. The formal model for the movement was probably the variations in Haydn’s “Emperor” Quartet (Op. 76, No. 3); as in that work, the theme is presented once by each of the ensemble’s instruments, but its content is distinctly and characteristically Schubertian. A sonatina of decidedly Gypsy-like cast closes this deeply satisfying work. �

© 2018 Dr. Richard E. Rodda

SYLVESTER PAUMGARTNER, COMMISSIONER OF THE QUINTET, INSISTED THAT IT INCLUDE ONE OF HIS FAVORITE SONGS, SCHUBERT'S "THE TROUT"

CMS AT SPAC

ABOUT THE ARTISTSJOSEPH CONYERS Joseph H. Conyers, assistant principal bass of the Philadelphia Orchestra

since 2010, joined Philadelphia after tenures with the Atlanta Symphony, Santa Fe Opera, and Grand Rapids Symphony where he served as principal bass. A 2004 Sphinx Competition laureate, he has performed with many orchestras as soloist and in numerous chamber music festivals collaborating with international artists and ensembles. In addition to being the most recent recipient of the C. Hartman Kuhn Award (the highest honor given to a musician in the Philadelphia Orchestra by music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin), he is the inaugural recipient of the Young Alumni Award from his alma mater, the Curtis Institute of Music, where he studied with Hal Robinson and Edgar Meyer. An advocate for music education, he is executive director of Project 440—an organization that provides young musicians with the career and life skills they need to develop into tomorrow's civic-minded, entrepreneurial leaders. Additionally, he is the music director of the All City Orchestra, which showcases the top musicians of the School District of Philadelphia. Project 440 partners with the School District in providing its curriculum in college and career preparedness, social entrepreneurship, and leadership. He is a frequent guest clinician presenting classes across the country including Yale University, New England Conservatory, The Colburn School, and University of Georgia. Mr. Conyers currently sits on the National Advisory Board for the Atlanta Music Project. He performs on the "Zimmerman/Gladstone" 1802 Vincenzo Panormo double bass which he has affectionately named “Norma.” NICOLAS DAUTRICOURT Voted ADAMI Classical Discovery of the Year at Midem in Cannes and

awarded the Sacem Georges Enesco Prize, Nicolas Dautricourt is one of the most brilliant and engaging French violinists of his generation. In the 2018-19 season he goes on tour in Bucharest, Montreux, and Lille with the Orchestre Français des Jeunes under Fabien Gabel, performing Saint-Saëns’s Third Concerto and Bartók’s Second Concerto, and makes his debut at the Paris Philharmonie with Prokofiev’s Second Concerto. He appears at major international venues, including the Kennedy Center, Wigmore Hall, Tchaikovsky Hall, Tokyo’s Bunka Kaikan, Salle Pleyel in Paris, and Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, and appears at many festivals such as Lockenhaus, Music@Menlo, Pärnu, Ravinia, Sintra, and Davos. He also has performed with the Detroit Symphony, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestre National de France, Orchestre de Toulouse, Quebec Symphony, Liège Philharmonic, Sinfonia Varsovia, Mexico Philharmonic, NHK Tokyo Chamber Orchestra, and the Kanazawa Orchestral Ensemble,

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under conductors Leonard Slatkin, Paavo Järvi, Tugan Sokhiev, Dennis Russell Davies, Eivind Gullberg Jensen, Yuri Bashmet, Michael Francis, François-Xavier Roth, Fabien Gabel, and Kazuki Yamada. He appears in such jazz festivals as Jazz à Vienne, Jazz in Marciac, Sud-Tyroler Jazz Festival, Jazz San Javier, Copenhagen Jazz Festival, and the European Jazz Festival in Athens. Award winner of the Wieniawski, Lipizer, and Belgrade competitions, he has studied with Philip Hirschhorn, Miriam Fried, and Jean-Jacques Kantorow. A former member of CMS Two, he plays a magnificent instrument by Antonio Stradivari, the "Château Fombrauge" (Cremona 1713), on loan from Bernard Magrez. SCHUMANN QUARTET The Schumann Quartet was praised by the Süddeutsche Zeitung as

playing “staggeringly well… with sparkling virtuosity and a willingness to astonish.” This season the quartet continues its three-year Chamber Music Society Two residency. The quartet also tours the U.S. and gives performances at festivals in South America, Italy, and Switzerland, as well as at Mozart Week in Salzburg and the Mozartfest in Würzburg. Other performances include concerts in the important musical centers of London, Hamburg, Berlin, Amsterdam, Florence, and Paris. The quartet’s current album, Landscapes, in which it traces its own roots by combining works of Haydn, Bartók, Takemitsu, and Pärt, has been hailed enthusiastically both at home and abroad, receiving five Diapasons and being selected as Editor's Choice by BBC Music Magazine. The Schumann Quartet won the 2016 Best Newcomers of the Year Award from BBC Music Magazine for its previous CD, Mozart Ives Verdi. The quartet's other awards include premier prix at the 2013 Concours International de Quatuor à Cordes de Bordeaux, the music prize of the Jürgen Ponto Foundation in the chamber music category in 2014, and first prize in the 2012 Schubert and Modern Music competition in Graz, Austria. The 2016-17 season saw a tour to Japan, concerts at festivals such as the Rheingau and Schleswig Holstein Music Festival, and renewed engagements at the Tonhalle in Zürich, Wigmore Hall in London, and in Munich. Sabine Meyer, Menahem Pressler, and Albrecht Mayer also gave concerts with the quartet. The previous season the ensemble was quartet-in-residence at Schloss Esterházy, and gave the first performance of a string quartet by Helena Winkelman. The season also saw concerts in the Tonhalle Zürich, the Musikverein in Vienna, London's Wigmore Hall, and the Concertgebouw Amsterdam; a tour of Israel; and the quartet's US debut in Washington, DC. The quartet has performed at many festivals, including Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Lockenhaus, the Davos Festival, Menton Festival de Musique in France, Cantabile Festival in Portugal,

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the Rheingau Music Festival, and the Korsholm Music Festival in Finland. Other appearances include venues such as Kings Place in London, the Konzerthaus in Vienna, Palacio Real in Madrid, Teatro Verdi in Trieste, and the Muziekgebouw in Eindhoven, The Netherlands. Brothers Mark, Erik, and Ken Schumann grew up in the Rhineland. In 2012, they were joined by violist Liisa Randalu, who was born in the Estonian capital, Tallinn, and grew up in Karlsruhe, Germany. The quartet studied with Eberhard Feltz and the Alban Berg Quartet, and served as resident ensemble for many years at the Robert-Schumann-Saal in Düsseldorf. GILLES VONSATTEL Swiss-born American pianist Gilles Vonsattel is an artist of extraordinary

versatility and originality. He is the recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant and the Andrew Wolf Chamber Music Award, and winner of the Naumburg and Geneva competitions. He has appeared with the Munich Philharmonic, Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, Boston Symphony, and San Francisco Symphony, and performed recitals and chamber music at Ravinia, Tokyo’s Musashino Hall, Wigmore Hall, Bravo! Vail, Chamber Music Northwest, La Roque d’Anthéron, Music@Menlo, the Lucerne festival, and Spoleto USA. Deeply committed to the performance of contemporary music, he has premiered numerous works both in the United States and Europe and worked closely with notable composers such as Jörg Widmann, Heinz Holliger, and George Benjamin. Recent and upcoming projects include appearances with the Chicago Symphony (Bernstein’s Age of Anxiety), Gothenburg Symphony (Messiaen’s Turangalîla Symphonie), Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana (Berg’s Kammerkonzert), Mozart concertos with the Vancouver Symphony and Florida Orchestra, as well as multiple appearances with the Chamber Music Society. A former member of Chamber Music Society Two, Mr. Vonsattel received his bachelor’s degree in political science and economics from Columbia University and his master’s degree from The Juilliard School. He is on the faculty of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. WU HAN Co-Artistic Director of the Chamber Music Society, pianist Wu Han

is among the most esteemed and influential classical musicians in the world today. She is a recipient of Musical America’s Musician of the Year award, one of the highest music industry honors in the US, and has risen to international prominence through her wide-ranging achievements as a concert performer, recording artist, educator, arts administrator, and

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cultural entrepreneur. Wu Han appears extensively with CMS; as recitalist with cellist David Finckel; and in piano trios with violinist Philip Setzer. Along with David Finckel, she is the founder and artistic director of Music@Menlo, Silicon Valley’s acclaimed chamber music festival and institute; co-founder and artistic director of Chamber Music Today in South Korea; and co-founder and artistic director of the Chamber Music Workshop at the Aspen Music Festival and School. Under the auspices of CMS, David Finckel and Wu Han also lead the LG Chamber Music School in South Korea. This spring BBC Music Magazine featured the duo on its cover CD. Beginning this fall, Wu Han will serve as Artistic Advisor of Wolf Trap’s Chamber Music at the Barns for two seasons. She is the co-creator of ArtistLed, classical music’s first musician-directed and Internet-based recording company, whose 19-album catalogue has won widespread critical praise as it celebrates its 20-year anniversary. Recent recordings include Wu Han LIVE II. Wu Han’s most recent concerto performances include appearances with the Aspen Chamber Orchestra, the Atlanta Symphony, and The Philadelphia Orchestra.

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ABOUT CMSThe Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center (CMS) is known for the extraordinary quality of its performances, its inspired programming, and for setting the benchmark for chamber music worldwide: no other chamber music organization does more to promote, to educate, and to foster a love of and appreciation for the art form. Whether at its home in Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, on leading stages throughout North America, or at prestigious venues in Europe and Asia, CMS brings together the very best international artists from an ever-expanding roster of more than 150 artists per season, to provide audiences with the kind of exhilarating concert experiences that have led to critics calling CMS “an exploding star in the musical firmament” (The Wall Street Journal). Many of these extraordinary performances are livestreamed, broadcast on radio and television, or made available on CD and DVD, reaching thousands of listeners around the globe each season. Education remains at the heart of CMS’ mission. Demonstrating the belief that the future of chamber music lies in engaging and expanding the audience, CMS has created multi-faceted education and audience development programs to bring chamber music to people from a wide range of backgrounds, ages, and levels of musical knowledge. CMS also believes in fostering and supporting the careers of young artists through the CMS Two program, which provides ongoing performance opportunities to a select number of highly gifted young instrumentalists and ensembles. As this venerable institution approaches its 50th anniversary season in 2020, its commitment to artistic excellence and to serving the art of chamber music, in everything that it does, is stronger than ever.

MEET THE MUSIC! ALBERT AND WOLFGANG WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 8, 1:00 PM SPA LITTLE THEATRE

In his day Einstein performed Mozart sonatas on the violin and played chamber music with professional musicians all over the world. Join us for an adventure with Einstein and Mozart! Concert for kids ages 6 and up and their families.

AN AFTERNOON IN VIENNA SUNDAY, AUGUST 12, 3:00 PM SPA LITTLE THEATREViennese composers Franz Schubert and Fritz Kreisler are showcased in this program with their hometown-inspired masterpieces. Join us 45 minutes before this concert for a panel discussion with the artists led by Kari Fitterer, CMS’s Director of Artistic Planning and Touring.

UPCOMING EVENTS

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WATCH CHAMBER MUSIC SOCIETY PERFORMANCES LIVE

FROM ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD

www.ChamberMusicSociety.org/WatchLive

Throughout CMS's 2018-19 season, view 25 unforgettable chamber music events streamed live to your computer or mobile device, and watch on demand up to 72 hours later. Browse the program, relax, and enjoy a front row seat from

anywhere in the world.

When SPAC’s season ends, we begin.

15 concerts by world-renowned artists.

Tickets from $30.

unioncollegeconcerts.org 518-388-6080

Union College Concert Series

Uchida

18-19

Belcea Quartet

Finckel & Han Keenlyside

Biss Padmore & Lewis Anderszewski

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SPAC Box Office (518) 584-9330 spac.org

NEW FOR 2018THURSDAY MATINEES SERIESSPONSORED BY THE WESLEY COMMUNITY

August 2Symphonic Shakespeare

August 9Young Virtuosi:Carnival of the Animals

August 16Captivating Classics

Yannick Nézet-SéguinAugust 9 & 16

Lucas and Arthur JussenAugust 9

Save 15% OnMatinee Performances!Purchase amphitheatre seats for anymatinee performance of The Philadelphia Orchestra and save 15%. Use coupon code CMSPO15 at checkout!

in the old style summer warmth

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