LAWRENCE DUTTON, VIOLA Lawrence Dutton, violist of the Emerson String Quartet, has collaborated with many of the world’s great performing artists, including Isaac Stern, Mstislav Rostropovich, Oscar Shumsky, Leon Fleisher, Walter Trampler, Menahem Pressler, Lynn Harrell, Yefim Bronfman, Joseph Kalichstein, Misha Dichter, Jan DeGaetani, Edgar Meyer, Joshua Bell and Emanuel Ax, among others. He has also performed as guest artist with numerous chamber music ensembles such as the Juilliard and Guarneri Quartets, the Beaux Arts Trio and the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio. He has been featured on two albums with the Grammy winning jazz bassist John Patitucci and tours regularly with cellist Ralph Kirshbaum and violinist Robert McDuffie. With the Beaux Arts Trio he recorded the Shostakovich Piano Quintet, Op. 57, and the Fauré G minor Piano Quartet, Op. 45, on the Philips label. His Aspen Music Festival recording with Jan DeGaetani for Bridge records was nominated for a 1992 Grammy Award. For BRAVO television he recorded works by Stravinsky and Hindemith. Mr. Dutton has appeared as soloist with many American and European orchestras including those of Germany, Belgium, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Colorado, and Virginia, among others. He has also appeared as guest artist at the music festivals of Aspen, Santa Fe, Ravinia, La Jolla and Chamber Music Northwest, and has collaborated with the late Isaac Stern in the International Chamber Music Encounters both at Carnegie Hall and in Jerusalem. He recently appeared at the Great Mountains Festival in Korea. Currently Professor of Viola and Chamber Music at the Manhattan School of Music and Stony Brook University, Lawrence Dutton began violin and viola studies with Margaret Pardee and continued with Francis Tursi at the Eastman School, when he began playing viola exclusively. He earned his Bachelors and Masters degrees at the Juilliard School, where he studied with Lillian Fuchs. He has received an Honorary Doctorate from Middlebury College in Vermont and the College of Wooster, Ohio and, as a member of the Emerson String Quartet, was a winner of the 2004 Avery Fisher Prize. Mr. Dutton uses Thomastik Spirocore strings. Lawrence Dutton lives in Bronxville, NY with his wife violinist Elizabeth Lim-Dutton and their three sons, Luke, Jesse and Sam.

LAWRENCE BROWNLEE, TENOR Lawrence Brownlee is a leading figure in opera, both as a singer who has graced the world's leading stages, and as a voice for activism and diversity in the industry. Captivating audiences and critics around the globe, he has been hailed as “an international star in the bel canto operatic repertory” (The New York Times), “one of the world’s leading bel canto stars” (The Guardian), and “one of the most in-demand opera singers in the world today” (NPR). In the 2024-2025 season, Mr. Brownlee made his highly anticipated role debut in the title role of Mozart’s Mitridate, re di ponto with Boston Lyric Opera. He also returns to The Metropolitan Opera as Count Amaviva in Il Barbiere di Siviglia (broadcast Live in HD in theaters worldwide), and joins Opéra national de Paris as Tonio in La fille du régiment and Arturo in I puritani, as well as The New National Theatre in Tokyo as Count Almaviva, and Bayerische Staatsoper as Tonio. On the concert stage, Mr. Brownlee will join Levy Sekgapane in a duo concert with the Latvian National Orchestra, L’Auditori in the closing concert, and will embark on a recital tour featuring songs from his acclaimed Rising program across North America and Europe. Highlights of Mr. Brownlee’s recent seasons include his return as Ernesto in Don Pasquale at Teatro alla Scala Milan and as Tonio in La fille du régiment at Lyric Opera Chicago, as well as his role debuts as Tamino in Die Zauberflöte at The Metropolitan Opera, as Edgardo in Lucia di Lammermoor at The New National Theatre Tokyo and Fernand in a new production of Donizetti’s La Favorite with Houston Grand Opera. In spring 2021, Brownlee joined The Juilliard School as a Distinguished Visiting Faculty Member. He serves as artistic advisor for Opera Philadelphia and is an Ambassador for Lyric Opera of Chicago’s Lyric Unlimited as well as Opera for Peace. In recent years, Mr. Brownlee has emerged as a pivotal voice around equity and diversity in classical music. Mr. Brownlee works with companies and engages civic organizations in the cities he visits to create programs and experiences seeking to expand opera audiences. His critically acclaimed solo recital program Cycles of My Being, a song cycle that centers on the black male experience in America today, has toured extensively, including performances at Opera Philadelphia, Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, and virtual broadcasts throughout 2020. Mr. Brownlee is a Grand Prize Winner of the 2001 Metropolitan Opera National Council auditions. He is also the recipient of numerous awards and distinctions including “Male Singer of the Year” (2017 International Opera Awards), the Kennedy Center’s Marian Anderson Award, and the Opera News Award (2021). In October 2019, he had the distinct honor of singing at Jessye Norman’s funeral in her hometown of Augusta, Georgia.

JERRY GROSSMAN, CELLO Jerry Grossman has been the principal cellist of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra since1986. He has appeared in recital, and with symphony orchestras and chamber ensemblesthroughout the United States. His highly acclaimed New York debut at the MetropolitanMuseum of Art was followed by the American premiere of Kurt Weill’s 1920 CelloSonata, leading to recording that work, as well as works by Dohnanyi, Prokofiev,Bartok, and Kodaly for Nonesuch Records. His recording of works for cello by VictorHerbert is available on New World Records. He has appeared as soloist in Carnegie Hall and on domestic and European tours with the Met Orchestra under James Levine playing Don Quixote by Richard Strauss. The performance has also been recorded for Deutsche Grammophon . A long association with the Marlboro Music Festival, including numerous ‘Music from Marlboro’ tours and recordings, figures prominently in Mr. Grossman’s chamber musicexperience. He is a former member of Orpheus and Speculum Musicae, and has alsoappeared as a guest artist with the Guarneri, Vermeer, and Emerson String Quartets. Hewas the founding cellist of both the Chicago String Quartet and the Chicago Chamber Musicians. Before assuming his position at the Metropolitan Opera, Mr. Grossman wasa member of the Chicago Symphony for two seasons and the New York Philharmonic for two seasons. Mr. Grossman began his music studies in his native Cambridge, Massachusetts. His teachers there included Judith Davidoff, Joan Esch and Benjamin Zander. He attended the Curtis Institute of Music, where he studied cello with David Soyer and chamber music with the other members of the Guarneri Quartet. Sandor Vegh and Harvey Shapiro were also important influences. Mr. Grossman has held faculty positions at the Juilliard School, the State University of New York at Binghamton, and DePaul University in Chicago. He currently teaches at the Kneisel Hall Summer Music Festival in Blue Hill, Maine.

OSCAR STAGNARO, JAZZ BASS Oscar Stagnaro, originally from Peru, is considered one of the most versatile bass players on the East Coast. His mastery of playing a variety of styles ranging from jazz and fusion to Latin jazz, Brazilian jazz, and South American music has helped him travel the world performing with the very best Latin jazz artists. Says Bass Player magazine, “Oscar’s technical agility, advanced harmonic and melodic knowledge, and grounding in funk and R&B—as well as his dedication to Latin traditions—give him the ultimate flexibility when it comes time to lay down a groove.” In addition to his performing career he has developed Latin Bass curricula at both the Berklee College of Music, where he is an associate professor, and at the New England Conservatory. Oscar joined Paquito D’Rivera’s group in 1990.

GREG ZUBER, XYLOPHONE Gregory Zuber is the principal percussionist with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, with which he has toured the United States, Europe, and Japan. He can be heard regularly on the Met’s many broadcasts and recordings. He is an active soloist, recitalist, composer, teacher, and clinician. Performance highlights include his 2004 solo recital at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall and his 2007 solo concert at the Verbier Music Festival. In 2002, he performed the premiere of Hsueh-Yung Shen’s Legend for solo percussionist and orchestra, commissioned for him by the Met, at Carnegie Hall with James Levine and the MET Orchestra. Mr. Zuber performs chamber music regularly with the MET Chamber Ensemble at Carnegie Hall. He also plays duo concerts with his wife, flutist Patricia Zuber. He is a faculty member of The Juilliard School and the UBS Verbier Music Festival.

September 27, 2009 – Danielle de Niese, soprano; Ken Noda, piano WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756-1791) Al desio di chi t’adoro September 27, 2009 – Danielle de Niese, soprano; Ken Noda, piano The Marriage of Figaro received a decidedly positive reception at its Viennese premiere in 1786. The cast was strong and the audience so enthusiastic that almost every piece had to be encored, effectively doubling the opera’s already considerable length. In order to ensure reasonable ending times at subsequent performances, Emperor Joseph decreed that only the solo arias could be repeated. Despite its initial success with the public, Figaro was dropped from the Burgtheater repertoire after only nine performances, not return to Vienna for another three years. Mozart had powerful competitors in the court’s musical establishment, Antonio Salieri among them, and these politically savvy rivals may have contributed to the opera’s disappointingly short initial run. Although the performances of The Marriage of Figaro were an artistic and public triumph, they did not constitute the financial success that Mozart had hoped for. In 1789, Figaro returned to Vienna with a greatly altered cast. Perhaps the most significant change was the loss of Nancy Storace, the enchanting English/Italian soprano for whom Mozart had created the role of Susanna. Storace’s replacement was Adriana Ferrarese, one of the most successful sopranos of the day but a singer of very different vocal and dramatic strengths. Storace was known for the subtlety of her singing and the wit and flexibility of her acting. Ferrarese, by contrast, was reared in the more formal world of Opera Seria and was known for her dramatic gravitas, formidable power and coloratura agility. In order to ensure the success of the all-important second Viennese run of Figaro, Mozart felt that some musical adjustments should be made in the role of Susanna. Mozart liked to boast that he could make an aria fit a singer like a well-made garment. Here he outfitted Ferrarese with music designed to highlight her particular blend of dignity and virtuosity. In the fourth act he abandoned Susannas’s subtly seductive aria, Deh vieni non tardar, and replaced it with Al desio di chi t’adoro, a more extroverted work tailored around Farrarese’s strengths. Al desio is written in the form of a two-movement (slow/fast) rondó concertante, the longest and most aristocratic type of aria then in vogue. Accompanied by an unusual complement of solo woodwind instruments (including basset horns, French horns, and bassoons), the aria evokes the sufferings of a tragic heroine. The aria is extremely expressive and provides opportunities for the soprano to display her dramatic temperament and vocal agility. Although rarely included in modern day performances of The Marriage of Figaro, Al desio has taken its rightful place as a favorite concert aria in the Mozartian soprano repertoire. By Michael Parloff Return to Parlance Program Notes

October 5, 2014 – Arnaud Sussmann and Erin Keefe violins; Hsin-Yun Huang, viola; Rafael Figueroa, cello; Gilles Vonsattel, piano JOHANNES BRAHMS (1833-1897) Piano Quintet in F minor, Op. 34 October 5, 2014 – Arnaud Sussmann and Erin Keefe violins; Hsin-Yun Huang, viola; Rafael Figueroa, cello; Gilles Vonsattel, piano In 1862 Brahms was seized with ideas for a string quintet of the Schubertian type—string quartet with second cello. Plagued with customary self doubts, and bearing in mind the friendly advice of violinist and composer Joseph Joachim that the ideas were too strong for the sonority of a string quintet, Brahms destroyed his first attempt, recasting it as a Sonata for two pianos in 1863–64. Brahms premiered this version with Carl Tausig early in 1864. Still unsatisfied, and heeding the advice of Clara Schumann, to whom it sounded like an arrangement, Brahms again rewrote the work in the summer of 1864 as a quintet for piano and strings. (This history brings to mind the composer’s First Piano Concerto, which also evolved through various forms.) Brahms’s Piano Quintet was published in 1865 after at least one private trial performance in November 1864; the first public performance took place in Leipzig on June 22, 1866. The Quintet has become one of the most famous and best-loved works in the chamber music repertoire. Repeated hearings do nothing to dull the sense of its power and beauty. The Piano Quintet version has attracted the most performers, but Brahms thought enough of the two-piano version not to destroy it—a major vote of confidence where he was concerned. He had it published, moreover, with the separate opus number 34b, though not until 1872, seven years after the Quintet version was published. It seems that the dedicatee, Princess Anna von Hessen, had been holding onto the loaned manuscript all that time. The opening figure, played in unison, displays a winding melodic shape that is constantly varied but recognizable throughout the work—a faster variation of the figure follows immediately in the fifth measure. Another idea that permeates the Quintet is the melodic half step, which first appears in forceful chords punctuating the rapid piano notes. All of the ideas in the second theme area treat this germinal half-step idea, often in lyrical fashion. The distant new key of the second theme, characterized by downward leaps, creates a remarkable tonal contrast with the opening section. In fact, much of the drama of this movement is inextricably linked with Brahms’s use of harmonic tonal centers. When the second theme area returns in the recapitulation, he employs an especially remote key (F-sharp minor) rather than the home key so as to delay the effect of the return, but also introducing yet another half-step relationship. In the coda, a beautiful calm passage—Brahms indulging in his beloved contrapuntal writing—suggests the possibility of an ending in the major, but this is fiercely obliterated by the minor home key. The slow, rocking motion of the second movement proves tremendously soothing after the stormy first movement. Its simple ternary form again exploits the same kind of key relationship as the first movement. Brahms also indulges in his fondness for parallel thirds and sixths throughout the movement. When the first section returns it is lovingly rescored. The Scherzo begins with a shadowy, eerie theme, only to be banished by a joyous if short-lived chordal outburst. So stunning is this effect that the motivic connection between it and the preceding staccato theme in a different meter might be overlooked. Typical and ingenious of Brahms, both of these are also related to the opening melodic motive of the first movement and its variants. Following a noble trio section with broad melody, he repeats the Scherzo literally. The ending of the Scherzo section—and thus the ending of the movement—shows a marked similarity to the ending of the finale of Schubert’s C major Quintet, D. 956, op. 163, which Brahms came to know well while he was writing his own Quintet. Again it emphasizes the all-important half step. The great English music scholar Donald Francis Tovey wrote that “the savage [half-step] at the end of the scherzo, comes straight from the end of Schubert’s Quintet, and from nowhere else in the whole history of final chords.” Brahms’s experiment with form for the last movement of the Quintet looks forward to his own First Symphony finale. Here, following Schubert’s lead, he fashioned a sonata form in which the recapitulation also serves as development, the whole being framed by a slow introduction and an immense fast coda. The jolly, folk-tinged first theme, which follows a somber introduction, again shows similarities with the opening theme of the Quintet. The Presto coda, one of the movement’s most remarkable features, encapsulates the entire movement, turning the main theme into a storm of staccato triplets and further varying the second theme. Its final section of syncopations is “straightened out” only at the very end by the forceful closing gesture. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 15, 2019 AT 3 PM STRAVINSKY! Ballet & Theater Music BUY TICKETS INN-HYUCK CHO, CLARINET Principal Clarinet, Met Orchestra DEMIAN AUSTIN, TROMBONE Principal Trombone Met Orchestra CHRIS COLETTI, TRUMPET Principal Trumpet Canadian Brass BENJAMIN LUXON, ACTOR-NARRATOR “His interpretive power is unquestioned.” — The New York Times ANDREW TYSON, PIANO “A real poet of the piano.” — BBC Radio 3 BENJAMIN BEILMAN, VIOLIN 2019 “Poised and monstrously talented” — Philadelphia Inquirer IAN ROSENBAUM, PERCUSSION Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society ANNI CROFUT, DANCER FRANK MORELLI, BASSOON Principal Bassoon Orpheus FEATURING ABOUT THE PERFORMANCE BUY TICKETS This special event will feature music from three of Stravinsky’s iconic theater works. The dazzling Piano Suite from Petrushka was inspired by the music from his groundbreaking 1911 ballet, and the neoclassic Suite Italienne for violin and piano was adapted from Stravinsky’s charming and witty score for his 1923 ballet Pulcinella . The afternoon will culminate with a fully narrated, choreographed performance of Stravinsky’s seminal 1918 theater work, The Soldier’s Tale , the Faustian tale of a young soldier who makes a deal with the Devil. PROGRAM Igor Stravinsky Three Movements from Petrushka Andrew Tyson, piano Program Notes Igor Stravinsky Suite Italienne Benjamin Beilman, violin; Andrew Tyson, piano Program Notes Igor Stravinsky The Soldier’s Tale Benjamin Luxon, narrator; Anni Crofut, dancer; Instrumental Septet Program Notes Watch Anni Crofut dance the Tango, Waltz, and Ragtime from Stravinsky’s “The Soldier’s Tale”:

October 30, 2022: EMERSON STRING QUARTET JOSEPH HAYDN (1732-1809) String Quartet in G, Op. 33, No. 5 October 30, 2022: EMERSON STRING QUARTET Haydn composed his six Opus 33 Quartets in 1781, nine years after his previous set of six, op. 20. A debate has raged for over a century about whether Haydn marked the attainment of perfect Classic Viennese style with these new quartets when he noted to possible buyers they were written “in a new and special way.” The latest thinking is that “new and special” was a phrase designed to sell works rather than a statement about arriving at the perfection of Classical style, since that would ignore the merits of the Opus 20 Quartets, the symphonies written around 1772, or, as scholar Robbins Landon suggests, the opera L’infideltà delusa or the Missa Cellensis of 1782. What scholars and listeners do agree on is that there is something different about the Opus 33 Quartets, chiefly a tendency toward popular, folklike expression and outwardly simple structures that hide an inner complexity—and, yes, they include a remarkable profusion of Classic stylistic elements whether or not they represent a turning point. Commentators have speculated, with the usual cautionary asides about art and life circumstances, that the lightness and humor of these Quartets were linked to Haydn’s personal happiness at this time—the beginning of his affair with singer Luigia Polzelli, hired by Prince Esterházy in 1779. Both were in unhappy marriages at the time and she became Haydn’s mistress by 1781. Over a decade later he was writing her from London: “Perhaps I shall never again regain the good humor that I used to have when I was with you.” Some of Haydn’s greatest wit and lightheartedness lies in the Opus 33 finales, which move away from sonata form or the contrapuntal complexity of fugues in favor of rondos or variation forms. On the other hand, and no doubt for balance, these works show more profundity in their slow movements. As to his “Scherzo” and “Scherzando” movements, though they are the first in his quartets to be so-designated instead of “Minuet,” they actually differ little from his previous minuets. Thus the aptness of the sometime nickname “Gli scherzi” (with scherzos) for the Opus 33 Quartets applies not so much to these movements as to the entire set’s many “jokes”—the literal Italian meaning of scherzi. Haydn first published the Opus 33 Quartets in 1782 with no dedication, but added one to Grand Duke Paul of Russia with the second edition of 1796, which led to their most common nickname “Russian.” This belated dedication had to do with the fact that most, if not all, received their first performance at the Vienna home of the Duke’s wife, Grand Duchess Maria Feodorovna, on Christmas Day, 1781. The Opus 33 Quartets gained instant popularity, so much so that fraud was immediately detected when a composer from Mainz tried to pass them off as his own. Haydn begins the G major Quartet—likely the first in order of composition—with a quiet, graceful “curtsey” or “bow” in a rhythm that prompted the English mid-nineteenth-century nickname “How do you do.” Many commentators have seen its cadential gesture as a supreme example of his wit—an ending as a beginning. The immediate contrast of the rhythmic main theme with its bold, repeating bass notes sets the stage for an almost symphonic movement in which Haydn often thickens the texture with double stops. Unlike the monothematic tendencies in many of the other sonata-form movements of the Russian Quartets, Haydn’s second theme introduces a lyrical idea over a cello pedal. In his development section he takes apart and recombines his thematic fragments with creative resolve, and his recapitulation expands into what approaches a second development. The slow movement unfolds in a tragic mood with the first violin “singing” an aria-like lament over individualistic accompaniment lines by the other three instruments. Many commentators have noted that Haydn may have been influenced by Orfeo’s “Che puro ciel” from Gluck’s opera Orfeo e Euridice, which he had directed at Esterhazá in 1776. The four instruments finally come together at the end in a forceful unison phrase, capped by a unison pizzicato that has elicited much speculation about whether it can fit the somber mood or should be heard as Haydenesque humor. Haydn certainly makes jokes in the third movement, taking the Italian term “scherzo” in its literal meaning. He teases the listener with meter-busting displacements and shows supreme comic timing when, just after seeming to get on track, he inserts a bar of rest. The graceful regularity of the trio provides tongue-in-cheek foil. The Finale, marked Allegretto, unfolds as an easy-going siciliano theme with three variations. The decoration increases in the third variation, first for the viola then the cello, and Haydn caps the movement with a presto coda that gallops toward the finish—but not without some final soft-loud playfulness. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

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

April 26, 2026: Jerusalem String Quartet Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) Quartet in B-flat, Op. 76, No. 4 (“Sunrise”) April 26, 2026: Jerusalem 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 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

September 25, 2016: Jason Vieaux, guitar FRANCISCO TÁRREGA (1852–1909) Capricho árabe September 25, 2016: Jason Vieaux, guitar At the age of ten Tárrega studied classical guitar with Julian Arcas, followed by training at the Madrid Conservatory, where he also studied theory, harmony, and piano. He soon began to teach and at the same time establish himself as a guitar virtuoso. His international reputation grew after successful appearances in Paris and London in 1880; he was acclaimed as “the Sarasate of the guitar.” Tárrega did much to promote the instrument at a time when the piano had almost completely overshadowed it. He not only composed some eighty original works for the guitar—Recuerdos de la Alhambra, Capricho árabe, and Danza mora are among his best-known solo pieces—but he transcribed over 140 works by other composers for one or two guitars, including pieces by Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Granados, and Albéniz. Albéniz once stated that Tárrega’s transcriptions were better than his own piano originals! Tárrega’s extremely popular Capricho árabe, composed after a trip to Granada, is dedicated to his friend and composer Tomás Bretón. A brief introduction—an isolated open fourth, an improvisatory riff, a brief chordal motive, all repeated—precedes Tárrega’s well-known melody with its signature beginning of two repeated notes. The accompanimental pattern of four bass notes with afterbeat chords is intriguing to follow as it changes harmonically to introduce new sections. The main theme alternates between presentations in minor and in major, with periodic improvisatory passages providing further contrast. A shortened return of the melody in minor closes the piece. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes