SUNDAY, APRIL 2, 2023 AT 4 PM ALL BRAHMS BUY TICKETS BORIS BERMAN, PIANO “The most remarkable aspect of Mr. Berman’s playing was its poetical refinement and intense musicality. His technical resources appear to be virtually limitless.” — The New York Times PAUL WATKINS, CELLO “Britain’s finest cellist, Watkins’ account [of the Elgar concerto] seems the best to have appeared on disc for years. It has intensity, presence and warmth.” — The Guardian ETTORE CAUSA, VIOLA “One can hear his prodigious sonority right from the very first seconds…with his deep and warm voice, sometimes dark and flamboyant but always profound and golden” — Diapason FEATURING ABOUT THE PERFORMANCE BUY TICKETS Three of the most celebrated musicians of our time, pianist Boris Berman, violist Ettore Causa, and cellist Paul Watkins, will collaborate in an afternoon of sumptuous music by Johannes Brahms. PROGRAM Johannes Brahms Sonata in E minor for cello and piano, Op. 38 Program Notes Johannes Brahms Sonata in E-flat for viola and piano, Op. 120, No. 2 Program Notes Johannes Brahms Three Intermezzos for piano, Op. 117 Program Notes Johannes Brahms Trio in A minor for viola, cello, and piano, Op. 114 Program Notes Watch pianist Boris Berman perform Brahms’s Intermezzo Op. 117, No. 1: Watch cellist Paul Watkins perform Brahms’s Cello Sonata in E Minor: Hear violist Ettore Cause perform Brahms’s Hungarian Dance No. 1:

LOS ANGELES GUITAR QUARTET For over three decades on the concert stage, the members of the Grammy® Award-winning Los Angeles Guitar Quartet have continually set the standard for expression and virtuosity among guitar ensembles, while perennially redefining themselves in their musical explorations. Popularly known as the LAGQ, the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet, is recognized as one of America’s premier instrumental ensembles. As one of the most charismatic groups performing today, their critically acclaimed transcriptions of concert masterworks provide a fresh look at the music of the past, while their interpretations of works from the contemporary and world-music realms continually break new ground. The LAGQ has given recitals in many of the world’s top venues, including Chicago’s Orchestra Hall, London’s Wigmore Hall and Southbank Centre, Tokyo Opera City, and New York’s Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall. They have toured extensively in Europe and Asia, where they were featured at the Hong Kong, Singapore and Manila International Arts Festivals and recently made highly successful debuts in China and Australia. The Los Angeles Guitar Quartet kicked off their 2016-17 season with a tour ofGermany. Performances throughout the season continue to span the United States, bringing them to Arizona, California, Colorado, Illinois, Maryland, Massachussetts, Mississippi, New Mexico, New York, Texas, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. Premiere performances of a new work by guitar legend Pat Metheny, commissioned specifically for them begin in October at Denver’s Newman Center and continue into the 2017-18 season. They bring the electric Rodrigo “Concierto Andaluz” to the Waco Symphony Orchestra and, for the holidays they reprise their beloved “Nutcracker Suite” on subscription and family concerts in San Francisco. Continuing to grow the repertoire for guitar quartet and guitar orchestra, the LAGQ will premiere a new work written by composer and longtime LAGQ member, Andrew York, throughout Arizona in April 2017 and plans to reprise this project in the Washington DC area the following month. Among last season’s highlights are a collaboration with Dweezil Zappa on a new work at the Crown of the Continent Festival in Montana, a reprise of their “Night of Spanish Romance” collaborative program with mezzo-soprano Janelle DeStefano and L.A. Flamenco to capacity crowds, and a tour the Baltics. Additional highlights include LAGQ’s role as Artistic Directors of the 2015 Laguna Beach Music Festival. As the focal point of the festival, they treated audiences to four days of performances, outreach activities and celebrations including: a joint concert with the LA Percussion Quartet, in which the combined octet premiered a new work by composer Jeff Holmes, a “Latin Romance” Valentine’s program with flamenco dancers plus a vocalist, and a closing performance of “The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote: Words and Music from the Time of Cervantes” with guest artist, Firesign Theatre veteran and voiceover actor, Phil Proctor. This last work was captured live at St Louis’ historic Sheldon Theater and released on DVD in March 2012. This multi-disciplinary project was originally developed and premiered in collaboration with the British actor John Cleese in Santa Barbara. Recent seasons have focused on many works written specifically for them including “Interchange,” the concerto written for them by Sergio Assad, and “SHIKI: Seasons of Japan,” a work written for them along with Guitar Orchestra. The world-premiere performance of “SHIKI” took place as part of an extended residency in Loudoun County (VA) a few days after the one-year anniversary of the Japanese earthquake. Since the premiere in 2012, this work, inspired by and dedicated to those affected by the earthquake and tsunami, has been performed in numerous communities throughout the United States. Pushing boundaries once again, the LAGQ participated in the ground breaking 2015 premiere of “How Little You Are” for voices and guitars, by Nico Muhly, one of today’s most sought after composers. The works was hosted by Texas Performing Arts in partnership with the Austin Classical Guitar Society and Conspirare. The Telarc release of “Interchange,” marked the LAGQ’s first recording of concertos by Rodrigo and Assad. “Interchange for Guitar Quartet and Orchestra,” the concerto written specifically for these four virtuosi by Brazilian composer and guitar master, Sergio Assad and featured on the Telarc CD, received a Latin Grammy® nomination for Best Classical Contemporary Composition. “Interchange” premiered at the Southwest Guitar Festival with the San Antonio Symphony in 2010 and was later recorded with the Delaware Symphony and Music Director David Amado, along with the Rodrigo “Concierto Andaluz”. Performing the work at the composer’s official centenary in Spain at the invitation of his daughter, for a “Live with the Boston Pops” television feature, and to a crowd of thousands at the Hollywood Bowl, are especially memorable events. Members of the Quartet also performed and recorded two works of Osvaldo Golijov with the Atlanta Symphony in Atlanta and at the Ojai(CA) and Ravinia(IL) Festivals. The LAGQ’s CD, “Guitar Heroes,” released on Telarc, won the group their first Grammy Award in 2005. It is a heartfelt salute to the great players who inspired the quartet, as individuals and as a group. It has received raves for its unique ability capture the feeling and fervor of diverse musical styles such as jazz, bluegrass, rock and flamenco. In November 2008, this recording joined those by artists such as the Who, Pink Floyd and Dire Straits on Sound and Visions “Top 10 Surround Discs of All Time”. Their first Telarc CD, “LAGQ – Latin,” features their popular transcription of Bizet’s Carmen, along with works from Chile, Cuba and some new original works by members of the quartet. This CD, which has received raves from listeners and critics alike, received a 2003 Grammy nomination and the Super Audio CD (SACD) version won the award for “Best Made for Surround” at the 1st Annual Surround Music Awards. The LAGQ’s release, “SPIN” (Telarc, 2006), shows yet again that the group is equally at home in a wide variety of musical genres and also features several commissioned works from their recent collaboration with percussionist Colin Currie. LAGQ-Brazil (Telarc, 2007) continues to receive raves and includes performances with singing sensation Luciana Souza. The LAGQ’s “Interchange” CD (Telarc, March 2010) features their long-awaited recording of Joaquin Rodrigo’s “Concierto Andaluz” and the premiere recording of Sergio Assad’s “Interchange” with the Delaware Symphony Orchestra. The DVD of “The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote” (March 2012) appears on the Mel Bay Artist Series, along with their first live-concert DVD. Their newest recording, entitled “New Renaissance,” released in March 2015 is a modern take on classic works. It includes long-awaited instrumental works from “Music from the Time of Cervantes”, and new works by Bogdanovic and Krouse, among others.

JOSEPH JORDAN, OBOE

May 15, 2016: James Morris, bass-baritone; Ken Noda, piano JOHN DUKE (1899-1984) Three Songs May 15, 2016: James Morris, bass-baritone; Ken Noda, piano After early music training from his mother, a talented singer, John Duke attended the Peabody Institute where he studied composition with Gustav Strube and piano with Harold Randolph. He continued his studying composition in New York with Howard Brockway and Bernard Wagenaar and furthered his piano skills with Franklin Cannon. He gave his piano debut piano recital in New York’s Aeolian Hall in 1920 in a program of Chopin, Debussy, and Liszt, among others, and performed the Grieg Concerto with the New York Philharmonic on tour in his hometown of Cumberland, Maryland, the following year. Fully aware of the challenges of a career as a concert pianist, he joined the faculty of Smith College in 1923, where he taught piano until his retirement in 1967. He furthered his musical training on sabbatical in 1929–30, studying composition with Nadia Boulanger in Paris and piano with Artur Schnabel in Berlin. He also spent a summer at Yaddo, the renowned artists’ community in Saratoga Springs, New York, and many summers at the Seagle Colony, a school for singers in Schroon Lake, New York. Though Duke composed a handful of orchestral and chamber pieces, the vast majority of his output features the voice—265 songs, several stage works, and a few choral pieces. His family background no doubt fostered his interest in song, though he himself said he was amazed at the way his career turned out. “In my early days, my ambition was to be a great pianist, and I could not have believed anyone who told [me] I was destined to be a song composer.” He came to believe that “vocal utterance is the basis of music’s mystery. The thing that makes melody a concrete expression of feeling and not just a horizontal design in tones is its power to symbolize the pull, the tension of our feeling of duration.” Duke was particularly interested in setting texts by American poets and he corresponded with many, among them Archibald MacLeish, William Rose Benet, Mark Van Doren, and Richard Nickson. Just as this correspondence attests to his choice of texts, his correspondence with prominent musicians—among them Roger Sessions, Aaron Copland, Walter Piston, Daniel Gregory Mason, Mack Harrell, Ross Lee Finney, Roy Harris, Arthur Fieldler, William Warfield, and Douglas Moore—reflects the neo-Romantic orientation of his style. This afternoon’s selections, “Richard Cory,” “Miniver Cheevy,” and “Luke Havergal,” feature three of four songs that Duke set to poems of Edwin Arlington Robinson in 1945. Duke creates a perfect musical description of the elegant saunter of Richard Cory as a man about town with his jaunty accompaniment in 6/8 meter. The shocking suicide moment he treats bare of accompaniment, followed by a brief dissonant piano comment. Duke sets “Miniver Cheevy” as “a satire in the form of variations.” The nine colorful variations following the presentation of the theme are labeled Melancholy, Sprightly, Dreamy, Dolorous, Grandiose, Indignant, Puzzled, Tipsy, and Epilogue, all describing someone who thought himself born too late, said to be Robinson’s skewering of his own anachronistic tendencies and referencing his alcoholic brother. “Luke Havergal,” in which a voice from the grave encourages Luke Havergal to join his dead lover, follows a ternary form in which the rich outer sections flank a chilling central section and the final section becomes positively majestic before ebbing. The poem might bring to mind Aeneas of classic lore being led by Sibyl to Queen Dido, who has died by suicide, but coupled with Duke’s music the result especially embodies the nineteenth-century Romantics’ theme of an intense yearning for death so as not to have to endure grief-stricken loneliness. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

January 31, 2010 – Stefán Ragnar Höskuldsson, flute; Stephen Williamson, clarinet; Yoon Kwon, violin; Abraham Appleman, viola; Joel Noyes, cello; Timothy Cobb, bass; Gregory Zuber, xylophone; Gareth Icenogle, narrator CAMILLE SAINT-SAËNS (1835-1921) The Carnival of the Animals January 31, 2010 – Stefán Ragnar Höskuldsson, flute; Stephen Williamson, clarinet; Yoon Kwon, violin; Abraham Appleman, viola; Joel Noyes, cello; Timothy Cobb, bass; Gregory Zuber, xylophone; Gareth Icenogle, narrator Camille Saint-Saëns started life as one of history’s most celebrated child prodigies. His extraordinary level of talent, temperament, and musical knowledge often invited positive comparisons with Felix Mendelssohn. Like Mendelssohn, Saint-Saëns composed fluently from his earliest years and became renowned while still a boy as one of the greatest pianists and organists of his day. As adults, both composers became known for their total musicianship, conservative tastes, classically refined sensibilities, and flawless compositional technique. And, like Mendelssohn, Saint-Saëns became a highly influential teacher and a well-educated polymath, whose extramusical interests ranged freely across such diverse fields as mathematics, botany, archaeology, poetry, literature, and astrology. Unlike Mendelssohn, however, Camille Saint-Saëns lived long enough to see his musical oeuvre become obsolete. His 86 years spanned two completely different musical eras, beginning during the time of Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Brahms, and ending during the period of Debussy, Ravel, Stravinsky and Gershwin. The older he became, the more stubbornly he clung to the music of the past. He grew impatient with forward-looking composers such as Jules Massenet, Claude Debussy, Richard Strauss, and Vincent D’Indy, and his increasing prickliness often drew critical fire. Fortunately, his innate brilliance and sense of fun always attracted a devoted circle of friends and admirers. In 1886, while vacationing in a small Austrian village, he decided to amuse his friends by composing the delightful zoölogical fantasy The Carnival of the Animals. Although the piece was a hit with his colleagues, Saint-Saëns became concerned that it would be considered too frivolous by the public at large and might even harm his reputation as a “serious” composer. With the exception of the touching cello solo, The Swan, he allowed only private performances of The Carnival of the Animals during his lifetime. After his death in 1921, the piece was finally published, and it quickly became one of Saint-Saëns’ most popular works. Inside jokes abound, as Saint-Saëns often pokes fun at other composers by inserting sly, incongruous musical references into the various animals’ portraits. The Tortoise, for instance, takes the frenetic, high kicking Can-Can from Jacques Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld and transforms it into a laggardly dirge. Similarly, The Elephant lumbers through ponderous versions of Hector Berlioz’s delicate Dance of the Sylphs and Mendelssohn’s gossamer Scherzo from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Nor is Saint-Saëns above poking fun at himself. In The Fossils he parodies his own maniacal waltz Danse Macabre, turning the original xylophone solo into a rackety, duple-meter skeleton dance. In the end, no one escapes entirely unscathed, least of all his critics, who are portrayed as asses in “People with Long Ears,” and whom we hear braying away toward the end of the whirlwind Finale. By Michael Parloff Return to Parlance Program Notes

March 9, 2025: Ravel’s 150th Birthday Concert, with Erika Baikoff, Soprano; Soohong Park, piano Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) Gaspard de la nuit for piano March 9, 2025: Ravel’s 150th Birthday Concert, with Erika Baikoff, Soprano; Soohong Park, piano Gaspard de la nuit (Gaspard of the Night) is one of the most difficult pieces in the piano repertoire—written by a composer who had achieved a certain level of proficiency on the instrument, then refused to practice except if he had to work up one of his own pieces for performance! Ravel’s inspiration was a book of poems by Aloysius Bertrand (1807–1841), shown to him by pianist and first interpreter of many of his piano works, Ricardo Viñes. Originally published posthumously in 1842 and reissued in its third edition in 1895, Bertrand’s Gaspard de la nuit , which he subtitled “Fantasies in the manner of Rembrandt and Callot,” piqued Ravel’s already healthy interest in the macabre. All during the summer of 1908 Ravel kept himself chained to his desk working on Gaspard even though all his friends had left for the country, and he finally he emerged with one of the most important works of post-Romantic piano literature. Viñes mastered Gaspard ’s intricacies by January 9, 1909, when he played the premiere at a concert of the Société Nationale. Ravel chose three of Bertrand’s poems, which he had printed in the score as prefaces to his atmospheric settings. Ondine carries on the line of Ravel’s other celebrated “water” pieces—Jeux d’eau and Une barque sur l’océan —with its iridescent flashes and murmuring waves. Ondine is the celebrated water sprite who falls in love with a mortal, is rejected, and returns beneath the waves. Though Ravel does not “narrate” the poem with his music, we surely hear Bertrand’s last line: “She, pouting, vexed, shed some tears, burst into laughter, and vanished in a sudden shower which trickled in white rivulets the length of my blue window panes.” Le gibet (The gallows) is based on Bertrand’s eerie scene of a corpse hanging from the gibbet in the howling wind at sunset. Ravel’s ingenious construction, which required three rather than the normal two staves to notate, employs obsessively repeated octave B-flats—“a bell tolling from the walls of a town far away on the horizon”—to serve as an internal pedal around which the chromatic harmonies swell and ebb. Scarbo is the malicious dwarf who is everywhere—“laughing in the shadow of my alcove, pirouetting on one foot and rolling across the floor like a bobbin from a witch’s distaff.” Here Ravel set out to compose music of “transcendent virtuosity,” which he intended “to be more difficult than Balakirev’s Islamey .” The incessant repeated notes and the infamous runs in parallel seconds are only some of the fiendish challenges Ravel set out for the pianist. His witty conclusion aptly illustrates Bertrand’s closing phrase: “then suddenly he would vanish.” —©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

December 18, 2016: Mariko Anraku, harp; Emmanuel Ceysson, harp CLAUDE DEBUSSY (1862-1918) Selections from Suite bergamasque, arranged for two harps December 18, 2016: Mariko Anraku, harp; Emmanuel Ceysson, harp Debussy was enchanted by the poetry of Paul Verlaine. Around 1890 he began composing a series of piano pieces that would become his Suite bergamasque , titled after a line of Verlaine’s famous poem Clair de lune . The poem had appeared in an 1869 collection entitled Fêtes galantes , which had been inspired by the paintings of Watteau and his followers. In these paintings, idealized landscapes of parks and gardens in the twilight are often populated by revelers in costumes of the tragic-comic characters of the commedia dell-arte—Harlequin, Pierrot, Colombine, and company—a form of theater that began in sixteenth-century Italy. Verlaine’s collection also provided texts for a number of Debussy’s songs before he returned to the piano pieces for revision and publication as Suite bergamasque in 1905. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the word bergamasque (or bergomask) referred to a fantasia or set of instrumental variations based on a folk dance—Shakespeare’s rustic characters in A Midsummer Night’s Dream , for example, dance a bergomask. Presumably that folk dance had some connection with the Bergamo district in northern Italy. Further, the character of the Harlequin is described as a mischievous servant from Bergamo. By Verlaine’s and Debussy’s time there was no evident connection with the bergomask’s traditional tune or harmonic scheme, but the association with a folk dance and the commedia dell’arte lingered. Debussy’s Suite bergamasque consists of four movements, Prélude, Menuet, Clair de lune, and Passepied, of which we hear I, III, and IV, arranged for two harps by Matthieu Martin. The Prélude opens with unhurried nobility, achieving Debussy’s aim of sounding improvisatory. This introductory idea leads to a stronger, chordally moving main theme, followed by a delicately textured second theme. The middle section develops both themes, with a kind of recapitulation that deals only with the opening introductory idea and the stronger main theme. The outline of sonata form, however, remains secondary to the lovely sense of improvisation or “Impressionism” that Debussy creates. Originally titled “Promenade sentimentale” after another Verlaine poem, the third piece became Clair de lune (Moonlight) when Debussy polished the Suite bergamasque for publication in 1905. Since then the piece has taken on a life of its own, having become extraordinarily popular and, sad to say, trivialized. Its luminous qualities and inspired construction, however, should inspire listeners to look beyond its familiarity. That amazing opening—how it just hangs there then gently descends as silvery light from the moon—is pure genius. Its rhythmic freedom gives the feeling of floating as does the delay of the anchoring pitch of the home key. Debussy, like his contemporary Ravel, was justly famous for his water imagery. The rippling central section no doubt responds to the line in Verlaine’s poem describing the moonlight bringing sobs of ecstasy to the fountains. The ending is magical—Debussy fragments the theme as moonlight would be broken up by shadows and allows it to die away in a haunting final cadence. A passepied was a French court dance of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in triple time, much like a minuet but faster, with fairly constant motion in eighth- or sixteenth-notes. For his Passepied, Debussy opted instead for a moderate tempo and 4/4 meter, perhaps reflecting his original title, Pavane, which refers to a stately court dance. He most likely changed the name after deciding that his piece was too active for a Pavane, but also to avoid comparison with Fauré’s influential Pavane, op. 50. It seems he was not worried about comparison with another source of inspiration—the Passepied from Delibes’s pastiche of “ancient” dances for Le roi s’amuse , which had long been available in piano transcription. Whatever the case, Debussy’s piece, unfolding in a kind of modified rondo form, shows a fascinating mix of the constant motion of a passepied and a profusion of contrasting melodies, all bathed in a kind of modal sonority that hints at older times while proclaiming Debussy’s Impressionistic orientation. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

February 20, 2022 – Paul Huang, violin; Danbi Um, violin; Juho Pohjonen, piano CHRIS ROGERSON Afterword for two violins and piano February 20, 2022 – Paul Huang, violin; Danbi Um, violin; Juho Pohjonen, piano Chris Rogerson began playing piano at the age of two (!) and cello at age eight, but he found his true calling as a composer. He studied at the Curtis Institute of Music, the Yale School of Music, and Princeton University with renowned composers Jennifer Higdon, Aaron Jay Kernis, Martin Bresnick, and Steve Mackey. Rogerson’s music, praised for its “haunting beauty” and “virtuosic exuberance” (New York Times) includes Of Simple Grace for Yo-Yo Ma, a book of Nocturnes written for ten different pianists from around the world, and works for the Atlanta, Houston, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, New Jersey, New World, and San Francisco symphonies, among others. The constant demand for Rogerson’s compositions has resulted most recently in a new piano concerto, commissioned by the Bravo! Vail Festival for Anne-Marie McDermott, and The Little Prince, a violin concerto for Benjamin Beilman commissioned by the Kansas City Symphony. Other premieres this season include Sacred Earth for mezzo-soprano J’Nai Bridges with video by National Geographic photographer Keith Ladzinski and two premieres with the Dover Quartet: Dream Sequence, a piano quintet also featuring Anne-Marie McDermott, and Arietta with bassist Edgar Meyer joining the quartet. As 2010–12 composer-in-residence for Young Concert Artists, Rogerson had works premiered in the YCA Series in New York at Merkin Concert Hall and at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. He served in the same capacity for the Amarillo Symphony, which commissioned and premiered six of his works, among them his Dolos Sielut (Ancient Souls, 2017) and Four Autumn Landscapes (2016), a clarinet concerto for New York Philharmonic principal clarinettist Anthony McGill. Rogerson has also held residencies at the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, and Copland House, and won the Jacob Druckman Prize as a Fellow at the Aspen Music Festival. Rogerson’s numerous honors include the 2012 Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, ASCAP’s Morton Gould Young Composer Award, and prizes from the National Foundation for the Advancement of the Arts and the National Association for Music Education. Rogerson co-founded Kettle Corn New Music in New York City in 2012 and serves as its artistic director. Since 2016 he has also been a faculty member at his Curtis, his undergraduate alma mater in Philadelphia, where he lives full-time. Afterword for two violins and piano was commissioned by the Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts and premiered in February 2020 by Danbi Um, Paul Huang, and Orion Weiss. Dedicated “to my great friend Jacob,” the piece owes its most ethereal sounds to a two-fold inspiration. Rogerson explains: “There is something noble, sweeping, and grand about looking back on life, reflecting on life’s triumphs, pains, joys, and mysteries. I composed this piece after Jessye Norman’s death, and listened to her sublime recording of Strauss’s autumnal Four Last Songs frequently. Strauss perfectly captures this feeling of contemplation, especially in the final song ‘Im Abendrot.’ In Afterword, I make subtle references to this song. “I also composed this piece while reading Hanya Yanagihara’s novel A Little Life, which is at its core a meditation on life’s sweetness and anguish. Without spoiling the novel, one of the characters experiences unimaginable pain. To me there is something particularly poignant about someone who reflects on a difficult life: the shortness of it, how cruel it can be, how ephemeral, how sweet.” © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

INON BARNATAN, PIANO Pianist Inon Barnatan has rapidly gained international recognition for engaging and communicative performances that pair insightful interpretation with impeccable technique. Described by London’sEvening Standard as “a true poet of the keyboard”, Mr. Barnatan performs a diverse range of repertoire, encompassing both classical and contemporary composers, with the variety of the pieces he performs reflected in his being equally valued as a soloist, recitalist and chamber musician. Since moving to the United States in 2006, Mr. Barnatan has made his orchestral debuts with the Cleveland Orchestra and the Houston, Philadelphia, and San Francisco Symphony Orchestras, and has performed in New York at Carnegie Hall, the 92nd Street Y, the Metropolitan Museum and Alice Tully Hall. In 2009 he was awarded a prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant, an honor reflecting the strong impression he has made on the American music scene in such a short period of time. In addition to his American appearances, Mr. Barnatan has appeared as a soloist with the Amsterdam Sinfonietta, Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Netherlands Chamber Orchestra, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, London Soloists Chamber Orchestra, Orchestra of New Europe, the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra and a tour with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields as a conductor and soloist. An avid chamber musician, Mr. Barnatan recently completed three seasons as a member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s CMS Two program. In 2009 he curated a festival of Schubert’s late solo piano, songs and chamber music works for the Society, the first musician other than the Society’s Artistic Directors to be invited to program concerts. ‘The Schubert Project’ program has also been performed at the Concertgebouw, the Festival de México, and at the Library of Congress. Other chamber music performances include the complete Beethoven piano and violin sonatas at the Concertgebouw, the Bergen International Festival in Norway, the Vancouver Chamber Music Festival, the Delft and the Verbier Festivals and the Lyon Musicades. His rigorous U.S. festival schedule has included a broad range of concerts at the Spoleto Festival USA, the Aspen and Bridgehampton Music Festivals, and the Santa Fe and Seattle Chamber Music Festivals. He has collaborated with musicians such as Liza Ferschtman, Miriam Fried, Martin Fröst, Gary Hoffman, Janine Jansen, the Jerusalem String Quartet, Ralph Kirshbaum, Cho-Liang Lin, Paul Neubauer and Alisa Weilerstein. In 2008 he received the Andrew Wolf Memorial Award in Rockport, awarded every two years to an exceptional chamber music pianist. Mr. Barnatan’s 2011-12 season appearances include a solo performance as part of the Lincoln Center’s Great Performers series, chamber music appearances in New York and a U.S. tour with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and West Coast recitals including opening the Music@Menlo Winter Series and performances at the Portland Piano International. He will make orchestral appearances with the Billings, Chattanooga, Eugene, Jacksonville and Oregon Symphony Orchestras and the Nordwestdeutschen Philharmonie with repertoire spanning a wide range of composers, including Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart, Ravel, Saint-Saëns and Tchaikovsky. In February 2012 he will embark on an eight-city European tour with cellist Alisa Weilerstein, preceded by concerto and chamber performances in Israel, and he will also undertake a three-week concerto and recital tour of South Africa in November. In 2012, Mr. Barnatan will release his second solo recording, Darkness Visible featuring wide-ranging but thematically-related works: Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit, Thomas Adés’s Darknesse Visible, Debussy’s Suite Bergamasque, Ronald Stevenson’s Peter Grimes Fantasy and Ravel’s La Valse. Intrigued by the fact that all of these works were inspired by other works of art (Ravel’s Gaspard is based on three poems by Aloysius Bertrand; Darknesse Visible is based on a John Dowland song; Debussy was inspired by a Verlaine poem; Stevenson’s Peter Grimes Fantasy is based on the Benjamin Britten opera; and La Valse is inspired by a story by Edgar Allen Poe), Mr. Barnatan examines how different characteristics of darkness are represented in music. These works will be performed by Mr. Barnatan at his solo recitals this season. Passionate about contemporary music, Mr. Barnatan regularly commissions and performs music by living composers, including works by Thomas Adès, George Benjamin, George Crumb, Avner Dorman, Kaija Saariaho and Judith Weir among others. Last season, he participated in Carnegie Hall’s “Making Music: James MacMillan” series, performing the composer’s Piano Sonata and chamber piece Raising Sparks. Mr. Barnatan’s debut CD of Schubert piano works was released on Bridge Records in 2006. London’s Evening Standard wrote: “The young, Israeli born pianist Inon Barnatan is a true poet of the keyboard: refined, searching, unfailingly communicative… This is musicianship of the highest caliber.” Gramophone recommended the recording in its November 2006 award issue, calling Barnatan “a born Schubertian” and praising the CD’s “sensitivity, poise and focus.” His second CD of works for piano and violin by Beethoven and Schubert with violinist Liza Ferschtman was described by All Music Guide as “a magical listening experience.” Born in Tel Aviv in 1979, Inon Barnatan started playing the piano at the age of three after his parents discovered he had perfect pitch, and he made his orchestral debut at eleven. His studies connect him to some of the 20th century’s most illustrious pianists and teachers: he studied with Professor Victor Derevianko, who himself studied with the Russian master Heinrich Neuhaus, and in 1997 he moved to London to study at the Royal Academy of Music with Maria Curcio – who was a student of the legendary Artur Schnabel – and with Christopher Elton. Leon Fleisher has also been an influential teacher and mentor and in 2004 he invited Mr. Barnatan to study and perform Schubert sonatas as part of a Carnegie Hall workshop, an experience that has had a lasting resonance for Mr. Barnatan. In 2006 Mr. Barnatan moved to New York City, where he currently resides in a converted warehouse in Harlem. For more information about Mr. Barnatan visit www.inonbarnatan.com or visit his page on Facebook.

MICHAEL STEPHEN BROWN, PIANO Winner of the 2018 Emerging Artist Award from Lincoln Center and a 2015 Avery Fisher Career Grant, Brown has recently performed as soloist with the Seattle Symphony, the National Philharmonic, NFM Leopoldinum, and the North Carolina, Wichita, Grand Rapids, New Haven, and Albany Symphonies; and recitals at Carnegie Hall, the Mostly Mozart Festival, and Lincoln Center. Brown is an artist of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, performing frequently at Alice Tully Hall and on tour. This season he opens the Society’s season with Bach and Mendelssohn concertos, and makes European recital debuts at the Beethoven-Haus Bonn and the Chopin Museum in Mallorca. He was selected by András Schiff to perform on an international tour making solo debuts in Berlin, Milan, Florence, Zurich’s Tonhalle and New York’s 92nd Street Y. He regularly performs recitals with his longtime duo partner, cellist Nicholas Canellakis, and has appeared at numerous festivals including Tanglewood, Marlboro, Music@Menlo, Gilmore, Ravinia, Saratoga, Bridgehampton, Caramoor, Music in the Vineyards, Bard, Sedona, Moab, and Tippet Rise. As a composer, he recently toured his own Concerto for Piano and Strings (2020) around the US and Poland with several orchestras. He was the Composer and Artist-in-Residence at the New Haven Symphony for the 2017-19 seasons and a 2018 Copland House Residency Award recipient. He has received commissions from the Gilmore Piano Festival, the NFM Leopoldinum Orchestra; the New Haven and Maryland Symphony Orchestras; Concert Artists Guild, Shriver Hall; Osmo Vänskä and Erin Keefe; pianists Jerome Lowenthal, Ursula Oppens, Orion Weiss, Adam Golka, and Roman Rabinovich; and a consortium of gardens.
 A prolific recording artist, his latest album Noctuelles, featuring Ravel’s Miroirs and newly discovered movements by Medtner was called “a glowing presentation” by BBC Music Magazine. He can be heard as soloist with the Seattle Symphony and Ludovic Morlot in the music of Messiaen, and as soloist with the Brandenburg State Symphony in music by Samuel Adler. Other albums include Beethoven’s Eroica Variations; all-George Perle; and collaborative albums each with pianist Jerome Lowenthal, cellist Nicholas Canellakis, and violinist Elena Urioste. He is now embarking on a multi-year project to record the complete piano music by Felix Mendelssohn including world premiere recordings of music by one of Mendelssohn’s muses, Delphine von Schauroth. Brown was First Prize winner of the Concert Artists Guild Competition, a winner of the Bowers Residency from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center (formerly CMS Two), a recipient of the Juilliard Petschek Award, and is a Steinway Artist. He earned dual bachelor’s and master’s degrees in piano and composition from The Juilliard School, where he studied with pianists Jerome Lowenthal and Robert McDonald and composers Samuel Adler and Robert Beaser. Additional mentors have included András Schiff and Richard Goode. A native New Yorker, he lives there with his two 19th century Steinway D pianos, Octavia and Daria. He will not reveal which is his favorite, so as not to incite jealousy. In his spare time, he learns Italian, carves stumps into coffee tables, and plays a lot of Mendelssohn.

January 27, 2019: Pinchas Zukerman Trio ANTON ARENSKY (1861-1906) Piano Trio No. 1 in D minor, Op. 32 January 27, 2019: Pinchas Zukerman Trio Arensky was influenced by some of the greatest figures of Russian music: Rimsky-Korsakov, his composition teacher at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, and Tchaikovsky, his colleague at the Moscow Conservatory, where Arensky taught upon his graduation. In turn he instructed other great Russians in Moscow, notably Rachmaninoff, Skryabin, and Glière. Returning to St. Petersburg in 1895, Arensky become director of the Imperial Chapel on Balakirev’s recommendation. From 1901 on, receiving a pension from the chapel, Arensky devoted himself to composing and to appearances as a conductor and pianist. Having been addicted to alcohol and gambling for some time, his life became more and more disorganized, according to Rimsky-Korsakov. He spent his final years in a tuberculosis sanatorium in Finland, where he died in 1906. Of his three operas, the first, Son na Volge (A dream on the Volga) achieved the greatest success, but his reputation generally rests on a few shorter works, such as the present D minor Trio, and short piano pieces at which he excelled. Arensky composed his D minor Piano Trio in 1894 and dedicated it to Karl Davïdov (1838–1889), who had been principal cellist of the St. Petersburg opera and later director of the conservatory there. The work might be classified in the “chestnut” category because of its familiarity, but this is a familiarity that is sensed even by one who is hearing the piece for the first time. The work evokes other composers in certain places—the trio of the Scherzo, for example, brings Saint-Saëns’s Second Piano Concerto to mind and the opening theme of the Finale suggests the “Polonaise” in the last movement of Tchaikovsky’s Third Orchestral Suite. Despite these influences, Arensky’s Trio could not have withstood the test of time without its own distinct identity. The first movement, in the tradition of late German Romanticism, unfolds in a grand sonata form, with the striking feature of an adagio statement of the opening theme to close the movement. The imaginative Scherzo, placed second, frames a trio that shows the Russian-Slavic-German fondness for an idealized kind of waltz. The slow Elegia, its somber mood enhanced by muted strings, is the movement that particularly pays tribute to the memory of Davïdov. It follows ternary form with a varied return of the “A” section. The Finale, a real tour de force, immediately dispels the mood with its exuberant polonaise-like main theme. The coda unifies the entire work, recalling the theme of the middle section of the Elegia and the first theme of the first movement in its adagio setting before the fast-paced conclusion. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes