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February 18, 2024: Anthony McGill, clarinet; Michael Stephen Brown, piano Jesse Montgomery Peace for clarinet and piano February 18, 2024: Anthony McGill, clarinet; Michael Stephen Brown, piano Biography provided by MKI Artists Jessie Montgomery, Musical America’s 2023 Composer of the Year, is a Grammy-nominated, acclaimed composer, violinist, and educator whose music interweaves classical music with elements of vernacular music, improvisation, poetry, and social consciousness, making her an acute interpreter of twenty-first century American sound and experience. Her profoundly felt works have been described as “turbulent, wildly colorful and exploding with life” (The Washington Post) and are performed regularly by leading orchestras and ensembles around the world. In July 2021 she began a three-year appointment as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Mead Composer-in-Residence. Montgomery’s growing body of work includes solo, chamber, vocal, and orchestral works, as well as collaborations with distinguished choreographers and dance companies. Recent highlights include Hymn for Everyone (2021), her first commission as Mead Composer-in-Residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, co-commissioned by the National Symphony Orchestra and Music Academy of the West; Five Freedom Songs, a song cycle conceived with and written for soprano Julia Bullock, for the Sun Valley and Grand Teton Music Festivals, San Francisco, Kansas City, Boston and New Haven Symphony Orchestras, and the Virginia Arts Festival (2021); I was waiting for the echo of a better day, a site-specific collaboration with Bard SummerScape and Pam Tanowitz Dance (2021); Shift, Change, Turn (2019) commissioned by Orpheus and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra; and Banner (2014), written to mark the 200th anniversary of “The Star-Spangled Banner” for the Sphinx Organization and the Joyce Foundation and presented in its UK premiere at the 2021 BBC Proms. Highlights of Montgomery’s 2023–24 season include the world premieres of orchestral works for violinist Joshua Bell, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, a consortium led by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra for New Music USA’s Amplifying Voices program, and a violin duo co-commissioned by CSO MusicNOW and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. Her future projects include a contribution to Alisa Weilerstein’s Fragments project, a percussion quartet, an orchestral work for the New York Philharmonic, and her final commissions as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Mead Composer-in-Residence. Montgomery has been recognized with many prestigious awards and fellowships, including the Civitella Ranieri Fellowship, the Sphinx Medal of Excellence, and the Leonard Bernstein Award from the ASCAP Foundation. She is currently Artist in Residence at the Vanderbilt University Blair School of Music, Composer in Residence at Bard College, and, since 1999, has been affiliated with the Sphinx Organization in a variety of roles including composer-in-residence for Sphinx Virtuosi, its professional touring ensemble. A founding member of PUBLIQuartet and a former member of the Catalyst Quartet, Montgomery holds degrees from the Juilliard School and New York University and is currently a doctoral candidate in music composition at Princeton University. * * * Montgomery originally composed Peace on a commission from Victoria Robey OBE for violinist Elena Urioste and pianist Tom Poster, who premiered it on their #UriPosteJukeBox series in May 2020. Outdoing Brahms, who saw to it that his two Opus 120 Sonatas work equally on clarinet or viola, Montgomery made Peace available not only for violin and piano but for viola and piano and clarinet and piano, in which version we hear it this evening. Montgomery described her brief piece thus: “Written just a month after the Great Sadness of the first quarantine orders due to COVID-19, facing the shock felt by the whole globe as well as personal crisis, I find myself struggling to define what actually brings me joy. And I’m at a stage of making peace with sadness as it comes and goes like any other emotion. I’m learning to observe sadness for the first time not as a negative emotion, but as a necessary dynamic to the human experience.” —compiled by Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

February 17, 2018: Chiara String Quartet JOSEPH HAYDN (1732-1809) The Seven Last Words of Christ for string quartet February 17, 2018: Chiara String Quartet THE BACKGROUND Haydn himself described the history of this unique work in the preface to his vocal version, published in 1801: About fifteen years ago [1785] I was asked by a canon in Cádiz to write instrumental music on the Seven Words of Jesus on the Cross. It was then customary every year, during Lent, to perform an oratorio in the main church at Cádiz, to the increased effect of which the following arrangements contributed a great deal. The walls, windows, and pillars of the church were covered with black cloth, and only one large lamp, hanging in the center, illuminated the sacred darkness. At noon all the doors were closed, and the music began. After a spoken prelude, suited to the occasion, the bishop ascended the pulpit and pronounced one of the Seven Words, and delivered a reflection upon it. When it was finished, he descended from the pulpit and knelt down before the altar. This interval was filled by music. The bishop ascended and descended the pulpit a second, a third time, and so on; and each time the orchestra filled in at the end of the discourse. My composition had to be appropriate to these circumstances. The task of writing seven Adagios, each of which was to last about ten minutes, to follow one another without wearying the hearers, was not the easiest; and I soon found that I could not confine myself to the prescribed time limits. The music was originally without text, and it was printed in that form [1787]. It was only at a later period that I was induced to add the text. . . . The partiality with which this work has been received by discerning connoisseurs leads me to hope that it will not fail to make an impression on the public at large. Haydn did not travel to Spain for the first performance on Good Friday, April 6, 1787, so it is perhaps understandable that he made one salient error in a remarkably detailed description, which he presumably dictated to Georg August Griesinger, handler of his dealings with publisher Breitkopf & Härtel. (It is also possible that Griesinger crafted the preface after Haydn showed him the original commissioning letter, which has since disappeared.) The term “main church” (Hauptkirche ) does not properly signify where the performance took place, not only because there are and were many “main churches” in Cádiz, but it is misleading even within the complex of buildings that comprise the Church of the Rosario. Scholars have assumed that Haydn was simply trying to make the place of the first performance sound more imposing, but we need to follow a bit of history before his description can be appreciated for what it is—the scenario that inspired one his most remarkable and successful compositions. The original Santa Cueva (Holy Cave), underground and adjacent to Cádiz’s Church of the Rosario, began to be used in 1756 by a fraternal group for their weekly meditations on the Passion of Christ. In 1771 Jesuit priest José Sáenz de Santa María became director of the brotherhood and began conducting these meetings. Two years later, in a tangential but related connection, he helped Italian cellist Carlo Moro obtain a position in the Cádiz Cathedral orchestra and provided him with an entree to the chamber music salons of the aristocracy. (The research of cellist Carlos Prieto, who plays the Stradivari cello “ex-Piartti” once played by Moro, has helped to establish a number of pertinent facts.) Father Santa Maria invited Moro to the Good Friday ceremonies at the Santa Cueva in 1774, which took place just as described much later by Haydn and deeply impressed the cellist. In 1778 Father Santa Maria inherited his father’s vast fortune and title, Marquis de Valde-Iñigo, and immediately decided to enlarge and refurbish the Santa Cueva. He hired architect Torcuato Cayón, whom he knew from Cayón’s work on the Cádiz Cathedral, and the renovation, begun in 1781, was completed in time for Good Friday services in 1783. Cáyon had just died in January that year, so his disciple Torcuato Benjumeda continued Cáyon’s and Father Santa Maria’s much grander plans—constructing the more luxurious upper chapel of the Santa Cueva between 1793 and 1796 and refurbishing the Church of the Rosario, also in 1793. Before those later projects were carried out, however, Father Santa Maria determined that his Passion ceremonies in the Santa Cueva would be greatly enhanced by the addition of music. The tradition of a noon to three o’clock meditation on the Seven Last Words is said to have originated in Peru with Jesuit priest Francisco del Castillo, and Father Santa Maria may have gotten the idea of adding music from the 1757 posthumous publication in Seville of another Peruvian Jesuit, Alonso Messia Bedoya. Father Santa Maria always aimed high and decided to commission the most famous composer of the time, Joseph Haydn, bypassing Moro’s suggestion of an Italian compatriot, Luigi Boccherini, who was living in Spain. The idea of approaching Haydn seemed daunting to Moro, but Father Santa Maria turned to fellow brotherhood member Francisco de Paula María de Micón, marquis of Méritos, and maestro di capilla of the Cádiz Cathedral, whom Moro knew from his work there and from playing at his chamber-music soirees—and with whom he especially enjoyed speaking Italian. More important, the Marquis of Méritos was a friend of Haydn’s. In 1785 the Micón wrote a commissioning letter to Haydn full of such detail that Haydn not only accepted the commission but knew what shape it would take and what the ethos and effect of his music should be. With their correspondence lost, we can only surmise that the marquis described the ceremonies just as Haydn laid them out in his preface, and that the ceremonies took place in the same way every year, just as Moro had witnessed in 1784. Further, one of Haydn’s nephews wrote that “the composition owed more to the explanation that he had received in writing from Sr. de Micón than to his own creation because in its own unique fashion, it led him through every step of the way, to the point that, while reading the instructions from Spain, it seemed as though he was actually reading the music.” It might be added, however, that Haydn’s mention of the difficulty of the task was borne out by his friend Abbé Stadler, who was with him when he received the commission. In his autobiography, corroborated by publisher Vincent Novello and his wife, Stadler helped him over a seeming quandary about how to proceed by suggesting the he simply write melodies as if he were fitting them to the first phrase of text in his mind. Before turning to the music itself, however, we might touch on one further possibility for Haydn’s 1801 use of the term “main church,” which has led many to suppose that the first performance took place in the beautiful upper Oratory, which had not even been built at the time of the first performance in the renovated underground Santa Cueva. Among many elaborate features—Ionic columns of jasper, ornate altar of silver and jasper, patterned marble floor—the upper Oratory boasts numerous sculptures, sculptured reliefs, and paintings, in particular, three paintings by Goya: The Last Supper , The Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes , and The Guest at the Wedding . Because plans for the upper Oratory were already in the works by 1785, it is entirely possible that the commissioning letter to Haydn contained many details that referred to the envisioned project (although Goya had not yet been specifically commissioned) as well as giving the description of the customary Good Friday ceremonies. The thread of the envisioned plans and how Haydn may have been influenced continues with another individual who might have played some role in Father Santa Maria’s conception of combining art and music in his Santa Cueva project. Sebastián Martínez, collector of art and literature, lived near the site and as a friend of Goya drew up the commission for his paintings for the upper oratory. Martínez owned an engraving of Poussin’s famous painting the Eucharist , which Goya would have seen while staying with him and which many commentators have described as one of the influences for Goya’s The Last Supper in the upper Oratory. As scholar Thomas Tolley suggests, Martínez, as a member of high society who was also interested in the relationship between painting and music, would have also revered Haydn and may have helped in the selecting and commissioning process. He and the others involved in commissioning may have even known the story of Haydn’s Farewell Symphony and hence his fascination with lighting effects, which may have helped to solidify their choice. In any case, it would be easy to imagine the commissioning letter including a copy of Poussin’s painting, which is strikingly similar to Haydn’s description of the “sacred darkness” illuminated by “only one large lamp, hanging in the center.” It is fascinating to think that Goya may in turn have even been influenced by a Good Friday performance of Haydn’s music in the underground Santa Cueva before completing his commission in the upper Oratory. In a remarkable tradition, The Seven Last Words has been performed at the Santa Cueva every Good Friday since 1787. Father Santa Maria made sure Haydn received the honorarium he had been promised, but in a manner almost as unusual as the work itself. One day Haydn received a small box from Cádiz, which he opened only to find a chocolate cake. Highly incensed, Haydn cut into it and found it filled with gold pieces. THE MUSICAL BACKGROUND Composed in 1786 and possibly completed in early 1787, the work originally bore the title Musica instrumentale sopra le 7 ultime parole del nostro Redentore in croce, ossiano 7 sonate con un’introduzione ed al fine un terremoto (Instrumental music on the 7 last words of our Redeemer on the cross, 7 sonatas with an introduction and at the end an earthquake), scored for pairs of flutes, oboes, and bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, timpani, and strings. We know from a later article, published around the time of a 1791 London performance, that at the time Haydn corresponded with the Bishop of Cádiz asking if he could exceed the ten-minute limit occasionally, to which the Bishop responded that he should do as he wished and he (the bishop) would shorten his sermons accordingly. (That correspondence is also unfortunately lost.) As soon as the work was completed, Haydn was already pleased with it and had it performed in Vienna on March 26 and Bonn on March 30, 1787, which performances actually predate the Cádiz performance by a few days. Haydn was taken to task by some but praised by others for his daring in expressing the Seven Last Words by purely instrumental music. He had also arranged the work in the present version for string quartet by February 14, 1787, and authorized a keyboard reduction. Then in 1794 he attended a performance in Passau for which his music had been fit with words by Joseph Friebert based on Christ’s last words from the four Gospels. Though Haydn complimented Friebert, he told a student that “could have written the vocal parts better,” and, with the help of Baron Gottfried van Swieten who adapted Freibert’s text, Haydn produced his own vocal version in 1795–96, inserting a new number for winds between the fourth and fifth sonatas, and adding clarinets, contrabassoon, and two trombones to the orchestra while subtracting two horns. This version, Die Sieben letzten Worte unseres Erlösers am Kreuze , was first perfromed in Vienna on March 26 and 27, 1796. Haydn’s instrumental original unfolds as follows, each movement, including the introduction and the earthquake, in sonata form: Introduzione, D minor, Maestoso ed Adagio: Haydn makes the most of the contrast between dramatic angular motives in dotted rhythm and contrasting tender passages with pulsing repeated notes. Sonata I: “Pater, dimitte illis, quia nesciunt, quid faciunt” (Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do), B-flat major, Largo: Sounding sweetly contrasting to the minor-mode introduction, this movement incorporates the distinct pulsing first heard there, and does switch to the minor mode for expressive purposes. Especially striking is the chromatic treatment for Haydn’s at that time imagined words “the blood of the lamb.” Sonata II: “Hodie mecum eris in Paradiso” (Today you will be with me in paradise), C minor ending in C major, Grave e cantabile: After the pensive opening and in the reprise, the switch to a singing melody in major over arpeggiated accompaniment represents the reward of paradise. Listeners may catch a foreshadow of the hymn (slow movement) of Haydn’s Emperor Quartet. Sonata III: “Mulier, ecce filius tuus” (Woman, behold your son), E major, Grave: Beginning with three simple repeated chords, Haydn’s simple seraphic setting represents the text, “Woman, behold thy son.” Scholar Daniel Heartz points out that Haydn had used similar music for his Salve regina in the same key of 1756. Sonata IV: “Deus meus, Deus meus, utquid dereliquisti me?” (My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?), F minor, Largo: Solemnity and lamenting begins to predominate with Haydn’s setting for the words “My God, why have you forsaken me?” in the far removed key of F minor. Haydn had also used this dark key for his Symphony nicknamed “La Passione” in 1768. Sonata V: “Sitio” (I thirst), A major, Adagio: This movement begins with an innocent-sounding melody over “dry” pizzicato accompaniment, which makes the entrance of the raging music for the imagined text, “I thirst,” so striking for its expression of torment. Sonata VI: “Consummatum est” (It is finished), G minor, ending G major, Lento: Haydn was particularly proud of this movement, in which he represents Jesus crying to God “In a loud voice”—five fortissimo chords—“It is finished.” Haydn later uses the motive for a bass line accompaniment to a lovely violin melody in the major. Sonata VII: “In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum” (Into your hands, Father, I commit my spirit), E-flat major, Largo: Haydn represents Christ’s yielding his spirit to God’s hand in with a noble first theme. The use of mutes gives the impression of quiet acceptance and the quiet ending suggests Christ’s earthly life being over. Il terremoto, C minor, Presto e con tutta la forza: Without pause Haydn unleashes the fury of the earthquake following Christ’s crucifixion, described in Matthew 27:51: “And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent.” Haydn’s depiction in raging unisons, darting gestures, and unsettling cross rhythms provides supreme if brief contrast to all the contemplation that has gone before. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

February 26, 2017: Emanuel Ax, piano Samuel Adams (1985) Impromptu: After Schubert (Premiere Performance) February 26, 2017: Emanuel Ax, piano Highly acclaimed for his imaginative, atmospheric works, Samuel Adams composes acoustic and electroacoustic music that draws on traditional forms, noise, and his experiences as an improvisor. He has received commissions from such prestigious entities as Carnegie Hall, the San Francisco and New World Symphonies, the St. Lawrence String Quartet, and—resulting in the present work—pianist Emanuel Ax. In 2015 the Chicago Symphony Orchestra named Adams a Mead Composer-in-Residence, which not only involves creating new works for the orchestra but co-curating the CSO’s acclaimed MusicNOW series. Light Readings , commissioned by MusicNOW, just received its premiere in 2016 by the Northwestern Bienen School of Music Contemporary/Early Vocal Ensemble and members of the Chicago Symphony. The year 2016 also saw the premiere of his Quartet Movement by the forward-thinking, Chicago-based Spektral Quartet. Adams is currently working on a piece for the Australian Chamber Orchestra and recently received a fellowship from the Civitella Ranieri Foundation in Umbria, Italy, where he will be an artist-in-residence during the summer of 2017. A committed educator, Adams frequently engages in projects with young musicians, among them the National Youth Orchestra of the United States of America (NYOUSA), for which he composed a work that was premiered under the baton of David Robertson. In the summer of 2016 he worked with the National Orchestral Institute fellows to record his Drift and Providence for release on the Naxos label. Adams also teaches composition periodically at the Crowden School in Berkeley, California. He himself studied composition and electroacoustic music at Stanford University while also active as a jazz bassist in San Francisco. He earned his master’s degree in composition from the Yale School of Music. Adams’s Impromptus, still a work in progress, date mainly from 2015–16, written for Emanuel Ax on a commission from Music Accord, a consortium of top classical music presenting organizations. Ax was scheduled to premiere the pieces on his European tour and give the U.S. premiere in December 2016 at the University of Iowa, but the present performance constitutes the launch of the work through the performance of the second of these Impromptus, “After Schubert,” composed in the winter of 2015–16. The composer writes: “I created these three pieces with the intention that they would be performed as links between each of the Four Impromptus, D. 935, by Franz Schubert. I imagine they could also be performed on their own—in any order or perhaps individually. . . . The process of writing the pieces was a terrific excuse to reacquaint myself with Schubert’s crystalline works (I used to play the Impromptus as a young pianist) and to rediscover their clarity, patience, and resonance. “The music I created aims to assume a similar posture. Each impromptu is carefully constructed but rooted in a simple impulse . . . the second [constitutes] a symmetrical ABA form with material lifted from American folk music and the Sonata in B-flat major. . . . Sincerest thanks to Emanuel Ax for this wonderful opportunity.” © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

May 6, 2018: Oliver Neubauer, violin; Anne-Marie McDermott, piano MAURICE RAVEL (1875-1937) Tzigane, rapsodie de concert May 6, 2018: Oliver Neubauer, violin; Anne-Marie McDermott, piano On one of his many performing tours to England, Ravel attended a private soiree in 1922 at which Hungarian violin virtuoso Jelly d’Arányi played the composer’s Duo with cellist Hans Kindler. As the evening progressed Ravel asked her to play a Gypsy melody, then another, until the party finally broke up at five o’clock in the morning. Though that occasion planted the seed for his Tzigane, rapsodie de concert (Gypsy, concert rhapsody), it took another two years for him to complete the piece because of numerous intervening projects such as his opera L’enfant et les sortilèges (The child and the sorceries). As it turns out, Ravel completed the brilliant, challenging Tzigane just days before Arányi and pianist Henri Gil-Marchex were to premiere it on April 26, 1924, in London. Her sensational performance dazzled the audience and critics—all but one, who expressed confusion over whether the composer was parodying Hungarian Gypsy violin music or launching a new style with more warmth than his previous works had shown. On November 24 that year Arányi also premiered Ravel’s orchestrated version, this time in Paris with Gabriel Pierné conducting the Concerts Colonne orchestra. While Ravel had been working on Tzigane he had sought technical advice from his violinist friend Hélène Jourdan-Morhange. “Come quickly,” he telegrammed her, “and bring the Paganini Caprices with you.” This speaks volumes about the kinds of feats expected of the violinist in this one-movement piece. The colorful but spare orchestral accompaniment prominently features the harp ingeniously combined with the solo violin. The opening “cadenza” for the unaccompanied violin sounds improvisatory and declamatory, beginning, in the instrument’s sultry lowest range and progressing through slides, trills, octave passages, and harmonics, all the while calling for the kinds of changes and bending of tempo so characteristic of Gypsy music. Toward the end of the cadenza the accompaniment sneaks in quietly but with an unexpected harmony. The violin and piano together launch the dancelike main section of the piece, which varies ideas from the cadenza and introduces two new themes—a sprightly patter first given to the piano and a swaggering theme marked “grandiose.” Ravel creates an effect of humorous suspense by slamming on the brakes several times during his brilliant drive to the close. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

November 4, 2018: Alessio Bax, piano MODEST MUSORGSKY (1839-1881) Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks November 4, 2018: Alessio Bax, piano Vladimir Stasov, who championed everything “progressive” and “truly Russian” in all forms of art, held gatherings of painters, sculptors, musicians, and writers at his home, and it was probably there in 1870 that Musorgsky met the lively architect, designer, and painter Victor Alexandrovich Hartmann. The great friendship that sprang up was cut short, however, when three years later Hartmann died suddenly of an aneurism. It was the grief-stricken Musorgsky who informed Stasov in Vienna by an almost incoherent letter that paraphrased King Lear: “What a terrible blow! ‘Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life,’—and creatures like Hartmann must die!” In Hartmann’s honor, Stasov organized a memorial exhibition for the spring of 1874 that featured not only watercolors and drawings, but architectural sketches and designs for jewelry, useful objects, stage sets, and costumes. The display inspired Musorgsky’s famous Pictures at an Exhibition, a piano piece that depicts ten works in the exhibition, with an eleventh recurring “picture,” Promenade, which portrays the composer himself walking through the gallery. Uncharacteristically enthusiastic about his progress, Musorgsky completed the entire composition in a single burst of twenty days. He dedicated the work to Stasov, who penned a preface to the original edition that describes the artworks that Musorgsky depicted—essential, since many of the items disappeared after the exhibition was dismantled. In its original piano version, Musorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition had been somewhat overlooked, but the work was immensely popularized by Maurice Ravel’s orchestration of 1922. That exposure rekindled interest in the piano original, which wonderfully documents Musorgsky’s belief in the elemental power of sheer inspiration, which for him took precedence over harmonic, structural, and pianistic convention. Today we hear the Ballet of Unhatched Chicks, which Stasov’s preface described as “Hartmann’s sketch of costumes for a picturesque scene in the ballet Trilby.” The exhibition catalog describes them as “canary chicks, enclosed in eggs as in suits of armor” with “heads put on like helmets.” Fortunately, this sketch still exists, but Musorgsky’s imagination led him further than costume sketches to depict a delightful pecking spree. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

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November 12, 2023: Angel Blue, soprano; Bryan Wagorn, piano RICHARD STRAUSS (1864–1949) Songs November 12, 2023: Angel Blue, soprano; Bryan Wagorn, piano Strauss wrote songs all his life, from his first song, “Weinachtslied” (Christmas song), at the age of six, to his Four Last Songs, so-named by his publisher, which he composed at the age of eighty-four. Many of his more than 200 songs were written for soprano Pauline de Ahna who became his wife in 1894; the composer himself usually accompanied her on the piano. Some of his songs remain infrequently performed—often because of their difficulty—while others hold a firm place both in recital and in orchestrated versions by Strauss and others on symphonic programs. Strauss composed the four marvelous songs of Opus 27 in 1894 as his wedding present to Pauline. He had become interested in a group of poets—followers of Max Stirner and his socialist ideals—who had established themselves as a force against sentimental mid-nineteenth-century poets and against folk and mock-ancient poetry. Strauss was little interested in their politics, but latched onto their Romantic outpourings. Third in the set, “Heimliche Aufforderung” (Secret invitation) sets a text by Scottish-born but German-raised Stirner disciple, John Henry Mackay. His text is an ardent love song, sung during a tryst amid a crowd of merrymakers. The eager vocal line is accompanied by rippling figurations that change several times to a more static texture to reflect the text. A peaceful postlude follows the ecstatic appeal for night to fall. “Allerseelen” (All Soul’s Day) belongs to Strauss’s first set of published songs, Acht Gedichte aus Letzte Blätter von Hermann von Gilm (Eight Poems from Last Leaves by Hermann von Gilm), op. 10. He had come across the poems in an 1864 volume brought back from Innsbruck by his friend and composer Ludwig Thuille. Strauss composed the songs in 1885, dedicating them to Heinrich Vogl, principal tenor at the Munich Court Opera, who had expressed admiration for them to the young composer. “Allerseelen” (All Souls’ Day), which appears last in the Opus 10 collection, refers to November 2, the day when Western Christians commemorate those dear to them who have died. The poet of Strauss’s setting is longing for his departed love to return, tenderly wishing for things to be as they once were. The song shows the twenty-one-year-old’s lyrical and harmonic mastery, in this case unfolding in a through-composed form that becomes progressively more dramatic. Another of Strauss’s greatest songs, “Befreit” (Freed), third in the Opus 39 set of 1898, sets a text by controversial but now largely forgotten Expressionist poet Richard Dehmel, whose poems became popular for their rich symbolism of erotic love, beauty, art, and feeling. Though Dehmel professed that poetry should have many equally valid interpretations, he went so far as to publish a criticism of Strauss’s setting but without giving specifics about why he thought it “too soft-grained.” He did admit that even though he had envisioned a man’s parting with his dying wife, there are many kinds of farewells. The title “Befreit” represents the loving couple so freed from suffering that not even death is a threat. Strauss’s moving setting emphasizes the constancy of their love and acknowledges with his poignant setting of “O Glück!” at the end of each verse that happiness radiates even through sorrow. “Morgen!” (Tomorrow!), which concludes the Opus 27 group (see above), sets another romantic text by John Henry Mackay. Strauss fashioned a delicate, rapturous setting, begun by one of his most extended and engaging introductions. The song concludes in recitative style followed by a condensed reminder of the introduction. Strauss dashed off “Cäcilie” on September 9, 1894, the day before his wedding. In a nice parallel, he was setting a poem that had been written to honor the wife of the poet, Heinrich Hart. (The text is often misattributed to Heinrich’s brother Julius.) Strauss is said to have embellished the already full and virtuosic accompaniment when performing the song, so it comes as no surprise that he decided to orchestrate it in 1897. Strauss placed it second in the Opus 27 set (see above), but it makes a perfect concluding selection here as his most impassioned and ecstatic love song. —©Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

October 17, 2021: Escher String Quartet JOSEPH HAYDN (1732-1809) String Quartet in B-flat, Op. 76, No. 4 (“Sunrise”) October 17, 2021: Escher String Quartet When Count Joseph Erdödy commissioned the Opus 76 Quartets in 1796, Haydn had recently returned to Vienna from the second of his highly successful London visits. He had always composed with confidence, but a certain new boldness in his style may have come from the realization that the entire Western world considered him the greatest living composer. The six “Erdödy” Quartets show formal experiments (continued, as mentioned above, in his Opus 77 quartets) both within or instead of sonata-form movements, a new profundity in their extremely slow-paced Adagios, fast “modern” minuets—scherzos in all but name—and more weight and novel tonal approaches in their finales. In June 1797 Haydn played some or all of the quartets on the piano for Swedish diplomat Frederik Silverstolpe, who considered them “more than masterly and full of new thoughts.” The Quartets were completed in time for a September 1797 performance at Eisenstadt as part of the grand festivities surrounding the visit of the Viceroy of Hungary, Palatine Archduke Joseph. Count Erdödy’s rights to the Quartets precluded their being published until 1799. That year English music historian Charles Burney wrote to Haydn that he “never received more pleasure from instrumental music: [the Quartets] are full of invention, fire, good taste, and new effects.” The B-flat major Quartet exudes the composer’s supreme confidence and originality: in one of the greatest openings in chamber music, the lovely first violin melody rises out of a chord sustained by the three lower instruments in a wonderful sunrise effect that earned the Quartet its nickname. Several commentators have remarked on the feeling of growth that this idea initiates in the movement. The continuation of the main theme brings great contrast with an energetic idea that fosters all the fiery passages in the movement, including the remarkable fortissimo bursts that close the exposition and recapitulation. The second theme uses the “sunrise” idea of the opening but in a kind of mirror image—the cello plays a winding descent as the others sustain the chord. Throughout the movement one hears the kind of mastery that so impressed Beethoven as he began writing string quartets with his Opus 18 series. Haydn’s Adagio somberly explores the possibilities of its first five notes. For a major-mode movement, this is one of the most dark-hued in the repertoire and seems to create a direct link with the poetic slow movements of Beethoven’s later quartets. Delicate filigree erupts not merrily but poignantly and the great downward leaps at the ends of sections seem to release but not totally relieve built-up tension. The second half, which begins like the opening, exaggerates these qualities with more filigree and wider plunges. For his fast Menuetto Haydn takes a little repeated two-note slur and fashions two entire sections from it. The second much longer section includes a varied return to the first, signaled by the little repeated slur in the cello—a nice bit of humor. Partway through this return, the focus again shifts briefly to the cello, soon followed by the viola. The Menuetto ends with another subtle touch of humor as twice the upward arpeggio fails to resolve in its own register. The contrasting trio evokes a truly rustic atmosphere with its folklike drones in the manner of a musette or bagpipes. The finale is a little masterpiece based on what some suspect is an English folk tune heard on his travels, but which he treats to sophisticated bits of contrapuntal and rhythmic manipulations. The matching first and third sections surround a no less jolly minor-mode section that contains several impish surprises. Following the return of the opening section Haydn takes us on an extended whirlwind ride, suddenly picking up speed only to shift to yet a higher speed for a virtuosic thrill. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

December 18, 2016: Mariko Anraku, harp; David Chan, concertmaster; Catherine Ro, violin; Dov Scheindlin, viola; Rafael Figueroa, cello CLAUDE DEBUSSY (1862-1918) Danse sacrée et profane December 18, 2016: Mariko Anraku, harp; David Chan, concertmaster; Catherine Ro, violin; Dov Scheindlin, viola; Rafael Figueroa, cello Please refer also to the “private little war” in the notes for Ravel’s Introduction and Allegro. The customary double-action harp is fashioned with seven pedals, which can make each of the seven notes of the diatonic scale either flat, natural, or sharp. In 1897 the famous Paris instrument-making firm of Pleyel introduced a new chromatic harp, which contained a string for every half step, thus almost doubling the number of strings. In 1903 Pleyel invited Debussy to compose a test piece, which was to be used for a class that was being initiated in the new instrument at the Brussels Conservatory. The resulting work, Deux danses (Danse sacrée et profane ), for harp and string orchestra has long since become a beloved part of the repertoire, while the chromatic harp has become a museum piece. The work is now played on the double-action harp, a possibility Debussy had allowed for on the title page; he also transcribed it for two pianos. Debussy used the collective title Danses for the work, which contains two movements, both in triple meter and A-B-A form. The slow Danse sacrée was suggested to Debussy by a piano piece by his friend, composer and conductor Francisco de Lacerda, but also owes something to Erik Satie’s Gymnopédies , of which Debussy was fond enough to transcribe two for orchestra. A vague ritualistic atmosphere, imparted by its slow-moving modal sonorities, often in parallel octaves, accounts for the title “sacred dance.” Similarly, the suggestion of a lilting waltz, rather than any specific pagan scene, gives rise to the title Danse profane . © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

THE TALLIS SCHOLARS THE TALLIS SCHOLARS Vocal Ensemble The Tallis Scholars were founded in 1973 by their director, Peter Phillips. Through their recordings and concert performances, they have established themselves as the leading exponents of Renaissance sacred music throughout the world. Peter Phillips has worked with the ensemble to create, through good tuning and blend, the purity and clarity of sound which he feels best serves the Renaissance repertoire, allowing every detail of the musical lines to be heard. It is the resulting beauty of sound for which The Tallis Scholars have become so widely renowned. The Tallis Scholars perform in both sacred and secular venues, giving around 80 concerts each year. In 2013 the group celebrated their 40thanniversary with a World Tour, performing 99 events in 80 venues in 16 countries. In 2020 Gimell Records celebrated 40 years of recording the group by releasing a remastered version of the 1980 recording of Allegri’s ‘Miserere’. In 2023/24 as they celebrated their 50th Birthday, the desire to hear this group in all corners of the globe was as strong as ever. They have now performed well over 2500 concerts. 2024/25 season highlights include performances in Japan, the USA, East Asia and a number of appearances in London as well as their usual touring schedule in Europe and the UK. Recordings by The Tallis Scholars have attracted many awards throughout the world. In 1987 their recording of Josquin's Missa La sol fa re mi and Missa Pange lingua received Gramophone magazine’s Record of the Year award, the first recording of early music ever to win this coveted award. In 1989 the French magazine Diapason gave two of its Diapason d'Or de l'Année awards for the recordings of a mass and motets by Lassus and for Josquin's two masses based on the chanson L'Homme armé. Their recording of Palestrina's Missa Assumpta est Maria and Missa Sicut lilium was awarded Gramophone's Early Music Award in 1991; they received the 1994 Early Music Award for their recording of music by Cipriano de Rore; and the same distinction again in 2005 for their disc of music by John Browne. The Tallis Scholars were nominated for Grammy Awards in 2001, 2009 and 2010. In November 2012 their recording of Josquin's Missa De beata virgine and Missa Ave maris stella received a Diapason d’Or de l’Année and in their 40th anniversary year they were welcomed into the Gramophone ‘Hall of Fame’ by public vote. In a departure for the group in Spring 2015 The Tallis Scholars released a disc of music by Arvo Pärt called Tintinnabuli which received great praise across the board. A 2020 release including Missa Hercules Dux Ferrarie was the last of nine albums in The Tallis Scholars' project to record and release all Josquin's masses before the 500thanniversary of the composer’s death. It was the winner of the BBC Music Magazine’s much coveted Recording of the Year Award in 2021 and the 2021 Gramophone Early Music Award. Their latest Gimell release in November 2024 is of music by Robert Fayrfax and was made Editor’s Choice in Gramophone. www.thetallisscholars.co.uk / www.gimell.com Promoters please note: We update our biographies regularly and ask that they are not altered without permission. For updated versions, please e-mail Jessica Kinney: jk@jamesbrownmanagement.com PETER PHILLIPS Director Peter Phillips has dedicated his career to the research and performance of Renaissance polyphony, and to the perfecting of choral sound. He founded The Tallis Scholars in 1973, with whom he has now appeared in over 2,500 concerts world-wide, and made over 60 discs in association with Gimell Records. As a result of this commitment Peter Phillips and The Tallis Scholars have done more than any other group to establish the sacred vocal music of the Renaissance as one of the great repertoires of Western classical music. Peter Phillips also conducts other specialist ensembles. He is currently working with the BBC Singers (London), the Netherlands Chamber Choir (Utrecht), the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir (Tallinn), The Danish Radio Choir (Copenhagen)and El Leon de Oro (Oviedo). He is Patron of the Chapel Choir of Merton College Oxford. In addition to conducting, Peter Phillips is well-known as a writer. For 33 years he contributed a regular music column to The Spectator . In 1995 he became the publisher of The Musical Times , the oldest continuously published music journal in the world. His first book, English Sacred Music 1549-1649 , was published by Gimell in 1991, while his second, What We Really Do , appeared in 2013. During 2018, BBC Radio 3 broadcast his view of Renaissance polyphony, in a series of six hour-long programmes, entitled The Glory of Polyphony . He is a regular reviewer on music for the London Review of Books. In 2005 Peter Phillips was made a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Minister of Culture. In 2008 Peter helped to found the chapel choir of Merton College Oxford, where he is a Bodley Fellow; and in 2021 he was elected an Honorary Fellow of St John’s College, Oxford. www.thetallisscholars.co.uk / www.gimell.com This biography is valid for use until September 2025. We update our biographies regularly and ask that they are not altered without permission. For updated versions, please e-mail jk@jamesbrownmanagement.com

September 29, 2024: Carter Brey, cello; Jeewon Park, piano Frederic Chopin (1810-1849) Polonaise Brillante in C, Op. 3 for cello and piano September 29, 2024: Carter Brey, cello; Jeewon Park, piano In October 1829 Chopin spent a delightful week at Antonin, Prince Radziwill’s estate in the principality of Poznan. While he was there he composed his Polonaise brillante for the cello-playing prince to play with his pianist daughter, Princess Wanda. The young composer wrote to his good friend Tytus Woyciechowski in November: While I was there I wrote an Alla Polacca with violoncello. It is nothing but glitter, for the drawing room, for the ladies; you see I wanted Princess Wanda to learn it. I had been giving her lessons. She is quite young: 17, and pretty; really it was a joy to guide her little fingers. But joking aside, she has a lot of real musical feeling; one did not have to say: crescendo here, piano there; now faster, now slower, and so on. Then on a visit to Vienna in 1830, Chopin decided to add an introduction to the Polonaise for cellist Joseph Merk. Our genius composer wrote home ingenuously in May 1831: “Merk tells me that he likes playing with me, and I like playing with him, so together we must produce something good. He is the first cellist whom I can admire on closer acquaintance.” When the Introduction and Polonaise brillante was published in Vienna in 1831, Chopin dedicated the work to Merk. Chopin clearly recognized the popular style of his earliest cello piece, but the “glitter” is charming nonetheless and the piece easily made its way from the drawing-room to the concert hall. Moreover, the experience gave him a feeling for the cello—the only instrument featured in all four of his chamber works. In the Introduction, piano flourishes initiate the strains of a mournful melody for the cello, leading to a nocturne-like episode and further rumination before the heroic Polonaise enters with its characteristic rhythm. Chopin provides a wealth of pianistic figuration to embellish the basic melodic line, concluding in a spate of animated display. —©Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

October 15, 2023: Lysander Piano Trio Amanda Maier (1853-1894) Piano Trio in E-flat October 15, 2023: Lysander Piano Trio During the all-too-short span of her life, Amanda Maier excelled in two male-dominated fields—as a solo violinist and as a composer. Although little is known about her childhood, clearly her musical talent was recognized early and she enrolled at age sixteen in the Kungliga Musikaliska Akademien in Stockholm. She became the first woman to earn the elite Musikdirektör diploma, receiving the highest possible grades in harmony, counterpoint, history and aesthetics, violin, organ, and piano. Her organ skills had merited her a place in the Academy’s even more exclusive Artistklass. Maier continued her education in Leipzig, studying violin with Engelbert Röntgen, concertmaster of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, and composition with conductor/composer Carl Reinecke and professor Ernst Friedrich Richter. She became a regular of the Röntgen household, participating in their many musical gatherings and eventually marrying Engelbert’s son Julius, who had become the love of her life. She also socialized and made music with many other renowned Leipzig musicians, including Clara Schumann and Edvard Grieg. Maier’s earliest surviving compositions, including the Piano Trio, date from this Leipzig period. The later 1870s also saw her performing and touring in an ensemble as a violinist, highlighted by a performance for King Oscar II in Malmö in 1876. The following year Maier returned home to Sweden, but after her father died, she returned to Leipzig where her life felt centered. The couple had to spend two years visiting between Leipzig and Amsterdam after Julius accepted a piano teaching position in the Dutch capital while she maintained her performing schedule in Leipzig and on tours in Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Russia. After their marriage in 1880 Maier settled in Amsterdam, and one year later their son Julius II was born, who was to become a violinist. The following year she suffered the first of three debilitating miscarriages, but in 1886 their second son Engelbert was born, who later became a cellist. Besides caring for her sons—whose early music education she oversaw—she continued to perform, though less frequently and rarely in public. Just after Engelbert was born, Maier fell ill with the lung disease that would plague her for the rest of her life. She also suffered from painful recurring eye trouble that often required her to wear dark glasses or a patch. Maier continued her musical activities during good spells between attacks, but they naturally lessened. When the devastated Röntgen wrote of her death to their good friends the Griegs, Edvard wrote back saying, “She was one of my favorites!” In the years after Maier’s death, concerts featured her works in Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Germany, and The Netherlands, but she and her music gently faded from public awareness. Since the 1990s, however, there has been a resurgence of interest in her music, with recordings and publications of works such as her Piano Quartet and Violin Concerto, which she had performed with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra in one of the pinnacles of her career. Going back to late April 1874, the diaries of both Julius and Amanda had made copious mentions of the Piano Trio, showing great pride and that they consulted on compositional details. They gave the first of many private performances on May 20, 1874, with cellist Julius Klengel (cousin of Julius Röntgen) at the Röntgen’s Leipzig home. Amanda wrote home to one of her favorite professors at the Stockholm Academy about another performance on June 7, saying: Everything has gone as well as I could have wished, and I believe I have made significant progress. . . . I performed . . . Mendelssohn’s concerto, and, among other pieces, a Trio for piano, violin and cello that I have recently composed. My Trio has been well received and sounds wonderful; they say here in Leipzig that my music has a ‘national’ flavor—a Nordic one, that is—which seems to be all the rage here. Jumping forward more than 140 years, Maier’s great-grandson Reinier Thadiens, who was living in Southern France, saw a list of her “lost works” and found the manuscript of her Piano Trio in a pile of music he had inherited. He immediately notified Swedish cellist and scholar Klas Gagge, who published it in 2018 through the Swedish Musical Heritage project and the Royal Swedish Academy of Music. The world premiere—that is, the public premiere—took place on April 20, 2018, performed in Umeå, Sweden, by violinist Cecilia Zillacus, cellist Kati Raitinen, and pianist Bengt Forsberg. In the first movement, Maier immediately contrasts her forthright opening idea with a quiet phrase in Classic-era style. She proceeds not like Mozart or Haydn, however, but aligns with Schubert, Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Brahms—those Romantic composers with a classical bent. The expressive second theme is related to the first but has more harmonic instability. Her development section, which journeys through distant harmonies on a scheme similar to Schubert’s E-flat Trio, D. 929, reaches several dramatic peaks before the climax that launches the recapitulation. Taking some Romantic “liberties,” she waits until the coda to bring back her second theme in the main key. The dancelike outer sections of Maier’s Scherzo consist of miniature self-contained sonata forms, much like Brahms’s Scherzo in his Horn Trio of 1865. The songful contrasting central trio section is particularly lovely. Led off by a lyrical cello melody, the slow movement is particularly poignant, with considerable opportunities for contrapuntal intertwining between the violin and cello. The broad three-part form includes a shortened and varied return of the opening and coda. The finale blossoms quickly from a gentle but sprightly opening to surging phrases brimming with Romantic vigor. Maier was clearly aware of some Romantic composers’ cyclic procedures, shown in her recalling of the slow movement. Throughout Maier has delighted in modulating excursions, so it comes as no surprise that she introduces a false reprise before returning “home” for a rousing finish. Return to Parlance Program Notes