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April 14, 2019: Anne Akiko Meyers, violin; Jason Vieaux, guitar JOHN CORIGLIANO (BORN 1938) Lullaby for Natalie April 14, 2019: Anne Akiko Meyers, violin; Jason Vieaux, guitar One of the most versatile, compelling, and honored composers of the last fifty years, John Corigliano was born into a musical family—his father a longtime concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic and his mother a fine pianist. He studied with Otto Luening at Columbia University, Vittorio Giannini at the Manhattan School of Music, and privately with Paul Creston. He himself has taught at the Manhattan School of Music, worked for radio and television stations, arranged rock tunes, and even written music for commercials. He is on the faculty at the Juilliard School and holds the position of Distinguished Professor of Music at Lehman College, City University of New York, which established a composition scholarship in his name. He is also one of the few living composer to have a string quartet named after him. Corigliano’s Symphony No. 1, composed in response to the AIDS crisis during his residency with the Chicago Symphony, won the Grawemeyer Award and two Grammy Awards. He received the Metropolitan Opera’s first commission in thirty years for The Ghosts of Versailles , which won raves and a 1992 International Classical Music Award. His Second Symphony earned the Pulitzer Prize in 2001, and his best-known work, the film score for The Red Violin , won an Academy Award in 1999 and spawned several pieces, including his Violin Concerto. Mr. Tambourine Man: Seven Poems of Bob Dylan (2000, rescored for orchestra and amplified soprano in 2004) won two Grammy Awards in 2008. The same year Evelyn Glennie premiered his Conjurer for percussion and string orchestra, which won a Grammy in 2013. Embracing many influences, Corigliano writes music that is mostly tonal, sometimes serial, often lyrical, frequently employing brilliant instrumental effects—always aiming to engage and captivate the listener. He composed his lovely Lullaby for Natalie in 2010 at the request of Anne Akiko Meyers’s husband to celebrate the birth of their first as-yet-unborn daughter. Corigliano writes, “After Natalie’s birth, I placed her name in the title, and Anne sent me a video of her playing it for her baby in a crib. The baby, awake at first, was asleep at the end, so either the five-minute lullaby had bored her to sleep or I had lived up to the promise of my title. I will never know.” The tender melody of Lullaby for Natalie features a sweet, rocking three-note gesture, almost as if singing the word “lull-a-by,” which gently weaves its way throughout the piece. The occasional slightly dark harmonies in the outer sections soon melt back into the soothing flow, and a throatier melody marks the middle section, though it too is lulling. Three times a rising scale floats into the stratosphere to bring on the tender melody in slight variants, the last time shortened and drifting off ethereally. Anne Akiko Meyers recorded the original violin and piano version of Lullaby for Natalie with Akira Eguchi on her Mirror in Mirror album and Corigliano’s later version for violin and orchestra with Leonard Slatkin and the London Symphony Orchestra on her American Masters CD. Andy Poxon (see the note for Corelli’s “La Folia” Sonata) artfully arranged the piece for violin and guitar. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

Elmar Oliviera, violin Elmar Oliveira is an American violinist whose remarkable combination of impeccable artistry and old-world elegance sets him apart as one of our most celebrated living artists. Oliveira remains the first and only American violinist to win the Gold Medal at Moscow's prestigious Tchaikovsky International Competition. He was the first violinist to receive the coveted Avery Fisher Prize and won First Prize at the Naumburg International Competition. Son of Portuguese immigrants, Oliveira was nine when he began studying the violin with his brother, John Oliveira and then attended the Hartt College of Music and the Manhattan School of Music. He holds honorary doctorates from both the Manhattan School of Music and Binghamton University. In 1997, the Prime Minister of Portugal awarded Elmar the country's highest civilian accolade, The Order of Santiago. Photo by Tucker Densley Oliveira has performed regularly at many of the most prestigious international concert venues. He has appeared with such esteemed Symphony Orchestras of Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Colorado, Detroit, Philadelphia, St. Louis, San Francisco, and Seattle, as well as the Philharmonics of Helsinki, London, Los Angeles, New York, and the Leipzig Gewandhaus and Zürich Tonhalle, among many others. He has also made extensive recital tours of North and South America, Australia, New Zealand and the Far East. Oliveira’s discography on Artek, Angel, SONY Masterworks, Vox, Delos, IMP, Naxos, Ondine and Melodiya ranges widely from Bach and Vivaldi to contemporary works that are swiftly becoming pillars of the violin repertoire. His best-selling recording of the Rautavaara Violin Concerto with the Helsinki Philharmonic won a Cannes Classical Award and was chosen as Gramophone's "Editor's Choice." He also received Grammy nominations for his recordings of both the Barber Concerto with Leonard Slatkin and the Saint Louis Symphony and the Bloch and Benjamin Lees Violin Concertos under the baton of John McGlaughlin Williams. Other recording highlights include the Brahms and Saint-Saëns concertos with Gerard Schwarz and the Seattle Symphony, the Joachim Concerto with the London Philharmonic, the complete Brahms sonatas with Jorge Federico Osorio, and the rarely heard Respighi and Pizzetti sonatas with pianist Robert Koenig. Two projects of particular historical significance: The Miracle Makers: Stradivari · Guarneri · Oliveira, a coffee-table sized book and three-CD set which compares and contrasts thirty exquisite violins by Antonio Stradivari and Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesù; and a release of short pieces highlighting the Library of Congress Collection of rare violins on Biddulph Recordings, speak to Oliveira’s extreme dedication to preserving and highlighting the violin and critical makers of the past as well as those that are important to the development of the instrument today. In 2016 Elmar Oliveira announced the creation of the Elmar Oliveira International Violin Competition. This competition - that takes place every three years - is open to any violinist of any nationality between the ages of 16-32 and offers critical career support in the form of artist management and public relations as well as cash prizes. The Inaugural competition took place at the Lynn Conservatory of Music, where Elmar Oliveira is Distinguished Artist-in-Residence, January 23 - February 5, 2017. The next competition will be held in January 2020. For more detailed information, please visit the web site www.elmaroliveiraivc.org . Additionally, Elmar Oliveira has founded the John Oliveira String Competition, an internal competition at the Lynn Conservatory of Music. The annual competition is open to all string students at the school. The competition was founded in memory of Elmar Oliveira's late brother, violinist John Oliveira. For more information, please visit www.john-oliveira.com . Oliveira Oliveira is passionate about expanding the role and repertoire of the violin as well as championing contemporary music and unjustly neglected works. He is a devoted teacher and promoter of young artists, and also keenly supports the art of contemporary violin and bow making.

September 29, 2024: Edward Arron, cello; Jeewon Park, piano Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) Seven Variations on Bei Männern from Mozart's Magic Flute for cello and piano September 29, 2024: Edward Arron, cello; Jeewon Park, piano Beethoven composed works in the popular vein just as industriously as he created his most soul-searching and original masterpieces of “art” music. Every famous and not-so-famous composer of his day, as in preceding generations, considered improvising or writing sets of variations practical tools of the composer’s art. Beethoven’s skill at improvising on a theme given to him on the spot was legendary, but he was also enough of a businessman to know that writing down and publishing variation sets was a lucrative business, especially if the varied theme were a popular tune from an opera that was making the rounds. Beethoven especially admired Mozart’s operas, though he was equally adept at varying less elegant themes, thereby rescuing them from ultimate obscurity. In the 1790s Beethoven had composed variations on tunes from three great Mozart operas: “La ci darem” from Don Giovanni for two oboes and English horn, “Se vuol ballare” from Le nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro) for violin and piano, and “Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen” from Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) for cello and piano. In 1801 he was again drawn to The Magic Flute—and the same cello-piano combination—this time for a set of variations on “Bei Männern, welche Liebe fühlen” (A man who feels love), originally an exquisite duet between the comic birdcatcher Papageno and Princess Pamina. Beethoven’s immediate stimulus was probably a revival produced around that time by Emanuel Schikaneder, the opera’s librettist and original portrayer of Papageno. Beethoven’s manuscript for the “Bei Männern” Variations shows a crossed-out dedication, probably to Countess von Fries, whose husband had just received the dedication of the Violin Sonatas, opp. 23 and 24. Evidently changing his mind, the composer inscribed the work instead to Count Johann Georg von Browne-Camus, whom Beethoven had described as “the Maecenas of my Muse” in the dedication of his String Trios, op. 9. Beethoven dedicated a number of works to the count, whose generosity extended even to presenting him with a horse for dedicating to his wife the Variations on a Russian Dance from Wranitzky’s “Das Waldmädchen.” As in many of his variation sets, Beethoven follows tradition by including variations of contrasting tempos and characters, a minor-key variation, and an elaborate and extended final variation. He preserves Mozart’s tender quality in the presentation of the theme—even suggesting the two singing roles by switching the melody between the piano right hand and the cello. He does, however, leave the stamp of his personality by making some subtle, fascinating changes in Mozart’s rhythm and articulation. The quiet but sprightly first variation breaks the mood and immediately shows that piano and cello are to be equal partners as they begin in counterpoint. The virtuosity for both is stepped up in the next variation, whereas the third calls for sweetness and grace. Variation 4, the minor-mode variation, presents a haunting kind of melancholy, featuring the cello in its lower range. The capricious fifth variation provides a foil both to this and to the Adagio variation that follows. Here the tenderness returns with an added layer of poignance and elegant figuration. The extended final variation offers a procession of characters from dancelike to stormy, and injects a last moment of reflection just before the energetic concluding chords. —©Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

November 2, 2014 – Isabel Leonard, mezzo-soprano; Sharon Isbin, guitar JOAQUÍN RODRIGO (1901–1999) Aranjuez, ma pensée November 2, 2014 – Isabel Leonard, mezzo-soprano; Sharon Isbin, guitar Rodrigo, blind since the age of three, showed great musical talent and was sent to Paris to study, where he became a student of Paul Dukas. In the 1930s he traveled extensively in Switzerland, Austria, and Germany, returning to Spain with the outbreak of war in 1939, the year he composed his famous guitar concerto, Concierto de Aranjuez. Although he was highly regarded by Dukas and also by his friend Manuel de Falla, he did not receive public recognition until the premiere of the Concierto in November 1940 by Regino Sainz de la Maza. Rodrigo became famous overnight. In addition to composing over the next six decades, Rodrigo wrote many articles about music, toured and lectured, gave piano recitals, and received numerous awards. His musical style was conservative yet imaginative—he called it “faithful to a tradition.” The successful combination of Classical influences with nationalist idioms was enhanced by his ability to write inspired melodies. One of these, from the slow movement of his famous Concierto, became the basis of “Aranjuez, ma pensée,” arranged in 1988 by the composer himself with lyrics in French by his beloved wife Victoria Kamhi. She frequently translated or adapted anonymous texts for many of his songs in addition to contributing her own poetry. They invited Sharon Isbin to meet them in 1979 after she won the Queen Sofia Competition playing the Concierto, and they maintained a warm friendship for two decades—Kamhi died in 1997 and Rodrigo two years later. Ms. Isbin writes that Rodrigo composed this melody “during the sleepless nights spent grieving over the stillborn birth of his first child and his wife’s ensuing illness. He wrote it as they reminisced about their honeymoon in the majestic gardens of Aranjuez, the magnificent eighteenth-century sight of kings and courtiers. It is both a love song and a song of painful yearning.” After many unauthorized arrangements of this ultra-popular theme appeared, some instrumental and some supplied with texts, the Rodrigos tried to reclaim the rights in court in 1967, but lost. Finally in 1987, Cecilia Rodrigo, their daughter, won the rights and it was she who encouraged Kamhi to pen the lyrics. TEXT AND TRANSLATIONS © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

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

BRENDAN KANE, BASS Double Bassist Brendan Kane has performed extensively throughout North America, South America, Europe, Asia and Australia. Originally from Stillwater, Minnesota, Mr. Kane joined the bass section of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra in the Fall of 2014. Prior to his appointment at the Met, Mr. Kane held the positions of Assistant Principal Bass of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra and Principal Bass of the Minas Gerais Philharmonic Orchestra in Brazil. He also regularly tours around the world as Principal Bass of the Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra as well as annual appearances at the Verbier Festival (Switzerland), Schloss Elmau (Germany) and the St. Barts Music Festival in the Caribbean. Mr. Kane has also performed with the Boston Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Detroit Symphony, National Arts Centre Orchestra (Ottawa), Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra (London), Pittsburgh Symphony, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and as Guest Principal Bass with the Hong Kong and Israel Philharmonics. As a chamber musician, he has performed with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, toured with the International Sejong Soloists and appeared alongside Pinchas Zukerman, Maxim Vengerov, Leonidas Kavakos, Tabea Zimmerman, Mischa Maisky and Sir András Schiff among others. Mr. Kane is on sabbatical from the MET for the 22-23 season upon being appointed Principal Bass of the Israel Philharmonic.

January 10, 2010 – Emerson String Quartet SAMUEL BARBER (1910-1981) Adagio from String Quartet No. 1, Op. 11 January 10, 2010 – Emerson String Quartet Samuel Barber’s poignant Adagio for Strings, heard here in its original form for string quartet, is perhaps the most well-known American composition of the 20th Century. Barber conceived the work as the second movement of his 1936 string quartet. He then arranged it for string orchestra after learning that the eminent Italian maestro Arturo Toscanini was looking for American music to feature in his 1938 season with the NBC Orchestra. Barber sent his arrangement to Toscanini along with a newly composed work, Essay for Orchestra. Months passed, and the scores were finally returned without comment. The disappointed Barber assumed that Toscanini had rejected the pieces. In fact, Toscanini had been so impressed that he had memorized the works and no longer needed the scores. He premiered them in a live, coast-to-coast NBC radio broadcast on November 5, 1938. The sensational response to Adagio for Strings catapulted the 26-year-old Samuel Barber to overnight fame. The success of Toscanini’s subsequent recording of the work (its seven-minute length made it ideal for the 78 rpm format of the day) sealed its popularity with the public. Barber eventually made additional arrangements of the piece, including a setting of the Agnus Dei (Lamb of God) for 8-part choir. Ever since April of 1945, when Adagio for Strings was performed during the radio announcement of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s death, the work’s contemplative dignity has established it as an anthem of national mourning. The Adagio was also performed at the funerals of John F. Kennedy, Albert Einstein, and Prince Rainier of Monaco, and it was often heard at memorial events in the days following the attacks of September 11, 2001. The piece has also served as a haunting accompaniment for numerous films, including David Lynch’s The Elephant Man and Oliver Stone’s Platoon. In fact, Barber did not compose the piece in the spirit of mourning or lament. Marked Molto adagio espressivo cantando (very slowly, with songlike expressiveness), he considered it to be an intimate meditation and was inspired by a short, passionate poem from Virgil’s Aeneid, presented below in a translation by Robert Pinsky: The Wave As when far off in the middle of the ocean A breast-shaped curve of wave begins to whiten And rise above the surface, then rolling on Gathers and gathers until it reaches land Huge as a mountain and crashes among the rocks With a prodigious roar, and what was deep Comes churning up from the bottom in mighty swirls Of sunken sand and living things and water . . . So in the springtime every race of people And all the creatures on earth or in the water, Wild animals and flocks and all the birds In all their painted colors, all rush to charge Into the fire that burns them: love moves them all. The arch form of the Adagio perfectly captures the poetic image of an ever-expanding sea swell, rising inexorably to a massive climax and then, having spent its accumulated force, rapidly dissipating. The piece unfolds organically from a pianissimo melodic cell first heard in the first violin. The theme weaves its way through the string texture as the dynamics gradually increase and the music ascends into the highest instrumental registers. An intense, sustained fortissimo climax is followed by a moment of silence and then a soothing pianissimo reiteration of the climactic chords two octaves below. A few peaceful transitional chords bring the music back to the original melodic motive, heard in the first violin and doubled an octave below by the viola. The musical journey ends in resignation, as the first five notes of the piece are slowly reiterated in the lowest register of the violin over a simple, sustained, F-Major triad. By Michael Parloff Return to Parlance Program Notes

Soovin Kim, violin Korean-American violinist Soovin Kim is an exciting player who has built on the early successes of his prize-winning years to emerge as a mature and communicative artist. After winning first prize at the Niccolò Paganini International Competition, Mr. Kim was recipient of the prestigious Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award, an Avery Fisher Career Grant, and the Henryk Szeryng Foundation Career Award. Today he enjoys a broad musical career, regularly performing repertoire such as Bach sonatas and Paganini caprices for solo violin, sonatas for violin and piano by Beethoven, Brahms, and Ives, string quartets, Mozart and Haydn concertos and symphonies as a conductor, and new world-premiere works almost every season. In recent seasons he has been acclaimed for his “superb…impassioned” (Berkshire Review) performance of Alban Berg’s Chamber Concerto at the Bard Festival with the American Symphony Orchestra and a “sassy, throaty” (Philadelphia Inquirer) rendition of Kurt Weill’s concerto with the Curtis Chamber Orchestra. Other unusual concerto collaborations included Mendelssohn’s Double Concerto with conductor Maestro Myung-Whun Chung, the same Mendelssohn concerto with the Dallas Symphony and music director Jaap van Zweden, and Beethoven’s Triple Concerto in Carnegie Hall. He has performed in past seasons with the Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Stuttgart Radio Symphony, Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra, and the Seoul Philharmonic and Accademia di Santa Cecilia Orchestra with Maestro Chung. For 20 years Soovin Kim was the 1st violinist of the Johannes String Quartet. Among their special projects was a two-season tour with the famed and now-retired Guarneri String Quartet in an unusual program including world-premieres of works by Esa-Pekka Salonen, Derek Bermel, and William Bolcom. Mr. Kim maintains a close relationship with the famed Marlboro Festival where he regularly spends his summers. He is well-known in Korea as a member of MIK, his ground-breaking piano quartet ensemble. He recently launched the exciting Chien-Kim-Watkins Trio with his wife, pianist Gloria Chien, and cellist Paul Watkins of the Emerson Quartet. Soovin Kim’s latest solo CD, Gypsy, was his third solo collaboration between American label Azica Records and Korea-based Stomp/EMI. They previously released a French album of Fauré and Chausson with pianist Jeremy Denk and the Jupiter Quartet, and Paganini's demanding 24 Caprices for solo violin which was named Classic FM magazine’s Instrumental Disc of the Month (“he emerges thrillingly triumphant…a thrilling debut disc.”). He made his first solo recording with Jeremy Denk for Koch-Discover in duo works by Schubert, Bartók, and Strauss. Mr. Kim also has six commercial chamber music recordings including an acclaimed live performance from the Marlboro Festival of Beethoven’s Archduke trio with pianist Mitsuko Uchida and the late cellist David Soyer. In 2019 his recording of Bach’s monumental solo sonatas and partitas will be released. Soovin Kim founded the Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival in Burlington, Vermont in 2009. With its focused programming and exceptional artists the festival is “increasing its stature as one of this country’s summer chamber music meccas (Rutland Herald).” Mr. Kim and the Lake Champlain festival helped to create the ONE Strings program in Burlington which makes violin lessons part of the regular curriculum for every 3rd, 4th, and 5th grader. In May 2015 he received an honorary doctorate degree from the University of Vermont in recognition of his contributions to the community. Soovin Kim dedicates much of his time to his passion for teaching. He has been on the faculties of Stony Brook University and the Peabody Institute, and now he teaches exclusively at the New England Conservatory in Boston. Mr. Kim studied at the Cleveland Institute of Music with David Cerone and Donald Weilerstein, and at the Curtis Institute of Music with Victor Danchenko and Jaime Laredo. Graduate of the Curtis Institute; studies at Cleveland Institute of Music. Studies with David Cerone, Donald Weilerstein, Victor Danchenko, Jaime Laredo.

February 16, 2020: Ying Fang, soprano; Ken Noda, piano WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756-1791) S’altro che lagrime from La clemenza di Tito, K. 621 Zeffirettti lusinghieri from Idomeneo, K. 366 February 16, 2020: Ying Fang, soprano; Ken Noda, piano In July 1791 Mozart received a “last-minute” commission to compose an opera to celebrate Leopold II’s coronation as King of Bohemia. He had to work quickly in order to complete La clemenza di Tito (The clemency of Titus) by September 6, when it would open at the National Theatre in Prague. Having begun the work in Vienna in late July, Mozart arrived in Prague on August 28 and completed the opera only the day before it opened. After modest successes, La clemenza di Tito experienced a triumphant closing night, which was reported to Mozart back in Vienna on September 30, the day of the premiere of Die Zauberflöte. More than forty composers had previously set Pietro Metastasio’s libretto for La clemenza di Tito, beginning with Caldara in 1734. For Mozart’s purposes the libretto was adapted by Caterino Mazzolà—“reduced to a proper opera” as Mozart put it—who shortened it by one-third and manipulated almost all of Metastasio’s texts so that there would be ensembles and finales in addition to solo arias. The plot, typical of opera seria (eighteenth-century dramatic opera, usually on a classical subject), concerns Titus (Tito), benevolent Roman emperor, whose plan to marry someone other than Vitellia, daughter of the deposed emperor, causes her to plot his demise. She enlists Sextus (Sesto)—who is Tito’s friend but hopelessly in love with her—to burn down the entire city of Rome and thus roast Tito alive. Meanwhile, Tito’s choice of consort has shifted for political reasons from Berenice to Servilia, Sesto’s sister, but when he learns that Servilia and his friend Annio are in love he declares he will not come between them. He now chooses Vitellia, but she doesn’t find out until it is too late to stop the deadly plot. Miraculously, Tito survives the fire, but Sesto is condemned to death for treason. Vitellia, unable to bear the guilt, confesses her part in the scheme, and Tito, who has granted Sesto clemency, now does the same for Vitellia. “S’altro che lagrime” (If nothing more than tears), a gentle minuet-like arietta, is sung by Servilia in Act II as she comes upon Vitellia crying and warns her that her tears are not enough to save Sesto from death. Servilia doesn’t realize that Vitellia is crying in guilty anguish over having brought about his death sentence. Stepping back in time to Mozart’s first big break in opera, in the summer of 1780 he received a commission to write an opera seria for the Electoral Court of Munich. Elector Karl Theodor’s establishment, having recently moved there from Mannheim, boasted one of the finest opera companies and probably the finest orchestra in Europe. Mozart had encountered many of these musicians in Mannheim during his travels several years earlier and he expended his greatest efforts to write a worthy opera. Salzburg cleric Giovanni Battista Varesco condensed Antoine Danchet’s earlier five-act libretto, Idomenée, into three acts, which Mozart—already exhibiting his exceptional dramatic sense of timing and theatrical effect—had to prune severely. Mozart wrote some of his most glorious music for Idomeneo, rè di Creta (Idomeneus, king of Crete), and the premiere, which Mozart conducted in Munich on January 29, 1781, was well received. Yet despite Mozart’s considerable innovations, opera seria was a dying art form, and Idomeneo disappeared from the repertoire, remaining unappreciated until the twentieth century. The story of Idomeneus, the Greek chieftain returning home after the Trojan war, parallels the Biblical story of Jephtha: in return for his deliverance from a horrendous storm, he vows to Poseidon that he will sacrifice the first living being he encounters when he goes ashore, only to find that this is his own son Idamantes. In Italian fashion, the libretto averts a tragic ending by having Poseidon decree that Idomeneus abdicate his throne in favor of Idamantes, who is to marry Ilia. She is the one he loves, though she had earlier given him up to her rival Electra as Idomeneus maneuvered to avoid sacrificing his son. Ilia sings “Zeffiretti lusinghieri” (Gently caressing zephyrs) at the outset of Act III, tenderly, exquisitely asking the wind to carry her thoughts of love to Idamantes. Graceful fast notes represent her message flying on the breeze. The middle section in this ternary form brings musical contrast, though it expresses the same basic idea even if it is now the plants and flowers that are to relay her love. © Jane Vial Jaffe Texts and Translations SERVILIA S’altro che lagrime Per lui non tenti, Tutto il tuo piangere Non gioverà. A questa inutile pietà che senti oh, quanto è simile la crudeltà. S’altro, etc. —Pietro Metastasio ILIA Zeffiretti lusinghieri, deh volate al mio tesoro, e gli dite ch’io l’adoro, che mi serbi il cor fedel. E voi piante, e fior sinceri, che ora innaffia il pianto amaro, dite a lui che amor più raro Mai vedeste sotto al ciel. Zeffiretti lusinghieri, etc. —Giovanni Battista Varesco after Antoine Danchet SERVILIA If nothing but tears you expend on him, all your weeping will not help. To this useless pity that you feel, oh how similar cruelty is. If nothing, etc. ILIA Gentle zephyrs, oh fly to my beloved, and tell him I adore him, and to keep his heart true to me. And you plants and tender flowers, which my bitter tears now water, tell him that no rarer love you have ever seen beneath the sky. Gentle zephyrs, etc. Return to Parlance Program Notes

JERUSALEM STRING QUARTET The Jerusalem Quartet, hailed by The Strad as “one of the young, yet great quartets of our time,” has garnered international acclaim for its rare combination of passion and precision. The ensemble has won audiences the world over, both in concert and on their recordings for the Harmonia Mundi label. They will begin the 2016/17 season with an extensive tour of Australia, followed by two visits to the United States, which include performances in Philadelphia, New York, Houston, Palm Beach, and Cleveland, among a total of 14 cities nationwide. Fall of 2016 will also see Harmonia Mundi’s release of the ensemble’s long-awaited recording of all six of Bartók’s string quartets. The Jerusalem Quartet is a record three-time recipient of BBC Music Magazine’s Chamber Music Award, for their recordings of Mozart (2012), Haydn (2010), and Shostakovich (2007). The quartet’s recording of Schubert’s Death and the Maiden and Quartettsatz in C minor was featured as Editor’s Choice in the July 2008 edition of Gramophone, and was also awarded an ECHO Classic chamber music award in 2009. The Quartet records exclusively for Harmonia Mundi. In 2003, they received the first Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award, and were part of the first ever BBC New Generation Artists scheme between 1999 and 2001. The Jerusalem Quartet formed while its members were students at the Jerusalem Conservatory of Music and Dance. They quickly found a shared commitment to the music that has not only endured, but has propelled them to the highest level of performance.

DEBORAH HOFFMAN, HARP Deborah Hoffman has been principal harpist with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra since 1986. Ms. Hoffman is chairperson of the harp department at Manhattan School of Music and has been a faculty member since 1997. She has appeared as soloist with the Pittsburgh Symphony, Jupiter Symphony, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, and the MET Orchestra in Carnegie Hall under the baton of James Levine. Ms. Hoffman has also toured extensively in Latin America as soloist with the symphony orchestras of Santiago, Costa Rica, Caracas, and Colombia. Ms. Hoffman was the first-prize winner of the 1981 American Harp Society Competition, and in 1978 was a top-prize winner in the Seventh International Harp Competition in Israel. In 1983 she was chosen to represent the United States at the First World Harp Congress in the Netherlands. Ms. Hoffman has performed throughout Canada and the United States as a member of the Hoffman Chamber Soloists, an ensemble comprised of her parents and three brothers. She received both Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from the Juilliard School, where she was a student of Susann McDonald. Ms. Hoffman records for Arabesque Records and has recently completed a Grammy-nominated recording of original transcriptions of Chopin works.

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