NICHOLAS CANELLAKIS, CELLO Hailed as a “superb young soloist” (The New Yorker), Nicholas Canellakis has become one of the most sought-after and innovative cellists of his generation, captivating audiences throughout the United States and abroad. In The New York Times, his playing was praised as “impassioned” and “soulful,” with “the audience seduced by Mr. Canellakis’s rich, alluring tone.” In the spring of 2015, Mr. Canellakis made his Carnegie Hall concerto debut, performing Leon Kirchner’s Music for Cello and Orchestra with the American Symphony Orchestra in Isaac Stern Auditorium. Mr. Canellakis is an artist of The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, with which he performs regularly in Alice Tully Hall and on tour. As a member of The Canellakis-Brown Duo, his collaboration with pianist/composer Michael Brown, Mr. Canellakis performs numerous recitals throughout the country each season. A frequent performer at Bargemusic in New York City, he has also been a guest artist at many of the world’s leading music festivals, including Santa Fe, La Jolla, Music@Menlo, Ravinia, Verbier, Mecklenburg, Moab, Bridgehampton, Sarasota, and Aspen. He is the co-artistic director of the Sedona Winter MusicFest in Arizona. Mr. Canellakis was a winner of The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s CMS Two international auditions. He was also selected to be in residence at Carnegie Hall as a member of Ensemble ACJW, in which he performed in Weill and Zankel Halls and worked to enhance music education throughout New York City. He is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music and New England Conservatory, where his teachers included Orlando Cole, Peter Wiley, and Paul Katz. Mr. Canellakis is on the faculty of the Brooklyn College Conservatory of Music. Filmmaking is a special interest of Mr. Canellakis. He has produced, directed, and starred in several short films and music videos, including his popular comedy web series “Conversations with Nick Canellakis.” All of his videos can be found on his website at www.nicholascanellakis.com .

SUNDAY, JANUARY 18, 2026 AT 4 PM THE VIRTUOSO OPERA FANTASY BENJAMIN BEILMAN, VIOLIN JONATHAN SWENSEN, CELLO ORION WEISS, PIANO BENJAMIN BEILMAN , VIOLIN JONATHAN SWENSEN , CELLO ORION WEISS , PIANO “Virtuosic and profoundly musical, Benjamin Beilman had a fluidity of phrasing that at times astounded as he stretched the musical lines to the limits and then stretched them some more.” —Limelight Magazine “Jonathan Swenson proves to be a mature artist with a bold, rounded sound and the chops to back it up.” — Clive Paget, Musical America “"When you're named after one of the biggest constellations in the night sky, the pressure is on to display a little star power — and the young pianist Orion Weiss did exactly that in a high-powered and often ferocious recital…” — The Washington Post ABOUT THE PERFORMANCE BUY TICKETS 2025-2026 SEASON September 14, 2025 “Singers” from the Met Orchestra October 12, 2025 Lawrence Brownlee, tenor November 2, 2025 Benjamin Appl, baritone; James Baillieu, piano December 7, 2025 The Tallis Scholars January 18, 2026 Benjamin Beilman, violin; Jonathan Swenson, cello; Orion Weiss, piano February 22, 2026 Radu Ratoi, accordion March 8, 2026 Jonathan Biss, piano April 26, 2026 Jerusalem String Quartet May 17, 2026 Chee-Yun, violin; Sterling Elliott, cello; Henry Kramer, piano Artist Roster Parlance Program Notes LOCATION At West Side Presbyterian Church 6 South Monroe Street Ridgewood, NJ 07450 For map and directions, click here . CONCERT AMENITIES Whee lchair Accessible Fr e e Parking for all concerts FEATURING BUY TICKETS THE VIRTUOSO OPERA FANTASY This thrilling program showcases three of today’s most exciting young artists — violinist Benjamin Beilman, cellist Jonathan Swensen, and pianist Orion Weiss — in a dazzling celebration of operatic fantasies. Drawing on melodies from such beloved operas as Mozart’s The Magic Flute, and Bizet’s Carmen , the program features instrumental works that transform iconic operatic themes into virtuosic showpieces. The concert promises to be an electrifying homage to opera’s enduring influence on instrumental brilliance. The program will include works by Beethoven-Mozart, Wagner-Liszt, Massenet, Bizet-Hubay, Fauré, and Mendelssohn. PROGRAM Ludwig van Beethoven: 7 Variations on “Bei Männern, welche Liebe fühlen” from Mozart’s The Magic Flute, WoO 46 for cello and piano Program Notes Richard Wagner-Franz Liszt: Isolde’s Liebestod from Tristan and Isolde for piano Program Notes Jules Massenet: Méditation from Thaïs for violin and piano Program Notes Jenö Hubay: Carmen Fantasie based on themes from the opera of George Bizet for violin and piano Program Notes INTERMISSION Gabriel Fauré: Élégie, Op. 24 for cello and piano Program Notes Felix Mendelssohn: Piano Trio No. 2 in C minor, Op. 66 Program Notes Watch violinist Benjamin Beilman play Three Pieces by Fritz Kreisler with pianist Gloria Chien: Watch cellist Jonathan Swenson play Chopin’s Cello Sonata in G minor with pianist Soyeon Kate Lee: Watch pianist Orion Weiss play Chopin’s Barcarolle, Op. 60:

LINO GOMEZ, SAXOPHONE Saxophonist Lino Gomez enjoys an extremely diverse career in the orchestral, chamber, and commercial music fields. A former member of both the American and the New York Saxophone Quartets, his other chamber music credits include performances with the Boston Symphony Chamber Players, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra Chamber Players and recordings with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. He is a frequent guest artist, as both saxophonist and clarinetist, of the Metropolitan Opera, New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Symphony, New Jersey Symphony, American Symphony, American Composers and New York Pops orchestras. He has performed solo roles with all of these ensembles, including performances of Eino Tanberg’s “Concerto Grosso” with the NY Philharmonic and the USA premier of Tan Dun’s “Red Forecast” with the American Composers Orchestra. Lino’s many commercial music credits include feature film soundtracks, radio andtelevision commercials, and Broadway shows. He is a former member of NBC’s Saturday Night Live band.

October 27, 2019: Quartetto di Cremona GIACOMO PUCCINI (1858–1924) Crisantemi October 27, 2019: Quartetto di Cremona On February 6, 1890, Puccini wrote to his brother Michele (who had settled in the far-off little city of Jujuy in the Andes) that he had composed a work for string quartet in just one night and dedicated it to the memory of Prince Amadeo di Savoia, Duca d’Aosta and King of Spain, who had died on January 18. Puccini called it Crisantemi because in Italy chrysanthemums are associated with funereal ceremonies and events. (Michele, always interested in his brother’s music, made piano versions of it both for two and four-hands from a copy his brother had sent.) The February 6 letter also mentions a successful—probably the first—performance of the work at the Milan Conservatory by the Campanari Quartet and another performance by the same musicians in Brescia. Though the piece is now performed by quartets or string ensembles looking for an interesting addition to their standard repertoire, Crisantemi is most often heard in Puccini’s reworking of it for some of the most poignant moments in Acts III and IV of his opera Manon Lescaut. The short melancholy quartet follows da capo form—A-B-A, where A is an exact repeat of the opening section. The “A” theme is used for the opening of Manon Lescaut’s final act, and the “B” theme for the orchestral passage accompanying Des Grieux as he addresses Manon through her prison window in Act III. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

WENDY CHEN, PIANO At the age of fifteen, Wendy Chen debuted with the Los Angeles Philharmonic under conductor André Previn. In 1990 she became the youngest winner ever of the National Chopin Competition, was one of the inaugural recipients of the Irving S. Gilmore Young Artists Award, and was named a Presidential Scholar by the National Foundation for the Arts. Since then, her career has flourished, adding Young Concert Artists International Auditions and Washington International Competition to her numerous awards. Ms. Chen has garnered critical acclaim for her engagements with leading orchestras and concert halls worldwide, with reviewers exclaiming that “having pianist Wendy Chen on the program is a guarantee that sparks will fly.” Her numerous orchestral appearances have included the New York Chamber Symphony, the Cincinnati Symphony and Chamber Orchestra, the Phoenix Symphony, the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra, Uruguay’s Orquesta Sinfonica del Sodres, New Zealand’s Auckland Philharmonia and Wellington Sinfonia, Montreal’s I Musici and many others. The Dominion of New Zealand described that “Chen possesses all the qualities of a modern musical star. Her playing was cuttingly virtuosic, had fantastic clarity and crispness, yet also plenty of sensitivity.” Ms. Chen has also appeared with the Boston Pops and the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra in unique programs that also featured musical legends James Taylor and Art Garfunkel, respectively. Of her performance with the Pops, the Boston Globe wrote “Chen’s performance had stamina, chops, brilliance and sensitivity – a formidable combination. She has given recitals throughout the world, including appearances in Prague’s Philharmonic Hall, Poland’s Warsaw Philharmonic Hall, Korea’s Seoul Arts Center, New York City’s Alice Tully Hall, Avery Fisher Hall, Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, Washington D.C.’s John F. Kennedy Center, Toronto’s Glenn Gould Studio, Nexus Hall in Tokyo, The Forbidden City in Beijing, and at the United States Supreme Court, in a special evening presented by The Honorable Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Equally sought after as a chamber musician, Ms. Chen spent many years performing duo recitals with the late cellist Stephen Kates, a pupil of Gregor Piatigorsky. She regularly appears in duo recitals with cellist Andrés Diaz. She has appeared at the Tanglewood, Boston Chamber Society, Montreal, Seattle, Spoleto, Amelia Island, Strings in the Mountains, Cartageña, St. Denis and Montreux music festivals. Having studied with legendary pianists Aube Tzerko and Leon Fleisher, Ms. Chen is a dedicated pedagogue, frequently giving master classes throughout the world. She completed a five year residency teaching at the University of Louisville, and has taught at the Innsbrook Institute in Missouri, the Community School of Performing Arts in Springfield, Massachusetts, the International Festival of Music in Cartageña, Colombia, and The Juan Corpas University in Bogota, Columbia. Ms. Chen has appeared on St. Paul Sunday Morning, can be heard regularly on NPR’s Performance Today, and serves as panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts. Her solo recording BOLERO featuring works by Chopin, was released on the RCM label. American Record Guide acclaimed “it glitters and it is gold.”

January 29, 2023: Danish String Quartet WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756-1791) String Quartet No. 16 in E-flat, K. 428 January 29, 2023: Danish String Quartet Upon his move from his native Salzburg to Vienna in 1781, one of Mozart’s most momentous musical developments was meeting Joseph Haydn for the first time and hearing his Opus 33 Quartets. Their profound influence resulted in Mozart’s composing his six Haydn quartets—the first three between December 1782 and July 1783 and three more between November 1784 and January 1785. He dedicated these “fruits of a long and arduous labor” to his esteemed friend saying, “During your last stay in this capital you yourself, my dear friend, expressed to me your approval of these compositions. Your good opinion encourages me to offer them to you and leads me to hope that you will not consider them wholly unworthy of your favor.” Haydn heard the first three performed at Mozart’s home on January 15, 1785, and the others on another visit February 12, played by Mozart, his father Leopold, and two friends. Leopold proudly reported to his daughter Nannerl back in Salzburg what Haydn had told him: “I tell you before God as an honest man that your son is the greatest composer known to me either in person or by reputation. He has taste, and what is more, the most profound knowledge of composition.” The E-flat major Quartet bears no date in the manuscript, but scholar Alfred Einstein’s best guess was that Mozart composed it in June or July 1783. That may still be the case, though more recent research has allowed that it could date from as late as the following January, which is still a year before the final two of the group, K. 464 and K. 465 (“Dissonance”). Whether or not it is the third of the Haydn Quartets, its lyrical warmth contrasts greatly with the other five quartets while showing every bit as much originality. The sonata-form first movement is at the same time concise yet rich in inventiveness. The opening melody, played softly by all four instruments in octave unison, leaps an E-flat octave that only later becomes confirmed as the movement’s key after a bit of lovely wandering. The second theme, led off by the violin and reiterated by the viola also indulges in quick harmonic deflections. The development briefly revisits the first theme forcefully—in a canonic pairing of violins answered by viola and cello—but focuses mostly on bits of the second theme interspersed with dramatic arpeggios. Mozart brings on the recapitulation through a striking harmonic inflection at the last moment . A movement of breathtaking lyricism and inventiveness, the Andante con moto gently spins out a melody at great length in an otherworldly four-part texture with exquisite tensions and relaxations. This extraordinarily rich, chromatic harmonization unfolds over a regular sonata form with a short but true development section. Mozart’s Menuetto immediately lands the listener in a rustic Haydnesque realm with its merry octave plunges (almost braying)—which reverse the octave leaps of the first movement—and its lightly stepping passages, drone effects, and occasional “horn fifths.” The trio casts a fascinating and mysterious shadow over the proceedings—the drones now host ethereally haunting music before the merrymaking of the Menuetto resumes. The main theme of the finale begins in hesitating two-note fragments before letting loose with running fast notes. Mozart plays with all manner of rhythmic displacements—a fitting tribute to Haydn’s own such witty techniques. The movement is in a modified sonata form, that is, without a development, but the character and contrasting sections certainly suggest a rondo. Comic pauses and sudden dynamic shifts—especially at the very end—contribute to the movement’s high spirits. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

ELAINE DOUVAS, OBOE Elaine Douvas has been principal oboe of the Metropolitan Opera since 1977 and was principal oboe of the Atlanta Symphony for four years prior. Her career highlights include the Strauss Oboe Concerto with the MET Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, James Levine conducting. In 2017, Douvas was invited to serve as Chairman of the Jury for the Munich ARD International Oboe Competition. She has recorded several solo CDs on Boston Records, Oboe Classics, Music Minus One, and one with her quartet “Pleasure is the Law”: flute, oboe, cello, and piano. Equally devoted to her career as a teacher, Ms. Douvas has served on the oboe faculty of The Juilliard School since 1982, The Mannes College of Music since 1981, and the Bard College Conservatory since 2009. In her capacity as Chairman of the Woodwind Department at Juilliard, she teaches career development and attitudes for career longevity! Her students hold positions in numerous orchestras and university faculties. In the summers she is a long-time artist-faculty member of the Aspen Music Festival and School, and she has given master classes and week-long seminars across the USA, as well as Canada, England, and China. Douvas lives in Ridgewood, New Jersey with her husband Robert Sirinek, former trumpeter with the Met and Orchestra Manager since 1986. They have two grown daughters, Portia and Margot, both pursuing careers in medicine. For over twenty years she has devoted her spare time to figure skating and has passed eleven USFSA tests in free-style and “moves in the field”.

JERUSALEM STRING QUARTET Alexander Pavlovsky, 1st violin Sergei Bresler, 2nd violin Ori Kam, viola Kyril Zlotnikov, cello “Passion, precision, warmth, a gold blend: these are the trademarks of this excellent Israeli string quartet.” Such was the Times’ (London) impression of the Jerusalem Quartet. Since the ensemble's founding in 1993 and their debut in 1995, the four Israeli musicians have embarked on a remarkable journey of growth and maturation. Their expansive repertoire and extraordinary depth of expression have firmly established them as a distinctive voice in the string quartet tradition. At the heart of their sound lies a warm, full, and deeply human tone, paired with an egalitarian balance between high and low voices. This approach allows the quartet to combine individual expression with a transparent and faithful presentation of the composer’s work. It also drives their ongoing refinement of interpretations of the classical repertoire, while encouraging explorations of new musical territories. The Jerusalem Quartet is a regular and cherished guest on the world’s most prestigious concert stages. The year 2025 marked the Quartet’s 30th anniversary, which the ensemble celebrated with a special focus on Shostakovich’s 15 quartets, presented across 10 cities worldwide, including St. Paul, MN; Cleveland, OH; Portland, OR; Concertgebouw Amsterdam; Beethovenfest Bonn; Philharmonie Cologne; and Tonhalle Zurich. Highlights of the upcoming 2025/2026 season include two North American tours, as well as extensive performances across Europe, with concerts at renowned venues such as the Konzerthaus Wien and Wigmore Hall in London. Another season milestone for the Quartet will be a series of quintet concerts in Europe in spring 2026 with celebrated pianist Elisabeth Leonskaja, taking place at prestigious venues including the Gewandhaus in Leipzig and the Alte Oper in Frankfurt. The Jerusalem Quartet’s recordings have received numerous awards and accolades, including the Diapason d’Or and the BBC Music Magazine Award for Chamber Music. Previous Harmonia Mundi releases include a unique exploration of Jewish music in Central Europe between the wars, featuring a collection of 1920s Yiddish cabaret songs from Warsaw performed with Israeli soprano Hila Baggio, as well as the second volume of their complete Bartók cycle released in 2020. Today, the quartet records exclusively for BIS, with their first release for the label in 2025 featuring Shostakovich Quartets No. 2, 7 & 10.

October 4, 2015 – Richard Goode, piano JOHANNES BRAHMS (1833-1897) Vier Klavierstücke (Four Piano Pieces), op. 119 October 4, 2015 – Richard Goode, piano Brahms began composing his Opus 119 Piano Pieces before completing the Opus 118 collection and published both sets in 1893. The Opus 119 pieces continue in the same predominantly introspective vein, except for the concluding Rhapsody of Opus 119, which ends Brahms’s solo piano output in heroic style. (Only the 51 Übungen, or Exercises, compiled over many years, were published later.) The three opening pieces of Opus 119 are titled “Intermezzo,” Brahms’s favored designation for a wide range of late piano pieces (see Opus 118 above). The first Intermezzo of Opus 119 is well-known for its characteristic falling thirds, which give it the resigned quality so often associated with Brahms’s works. The Andante of the F minor Two-Piano Sonata, op. 34b, the opening of the Fourth Symphony, and the Four Serious Songs provide notable examples of this characteristic. Brahms gave the first Intermezzo to Clara Schumann as a birthday present in 1893, though it actually marked his birthday by the time he sent it to her. He wrote: I am tempted to have a short piece of music copied for you, as I should very much like to know how you get on with it. It teems with discords. . . . It is exceptionally melancholy, and to say “to be played very slowly” is not sufficient. Every bar and every note must be played as if ritardando were indicated, and one wished to draw the melancholy out of each one of them, and voluptuous joy and comfort out of the discords. My God, how this description will whet your appetite! Clara wrote that “one actually revels in the discords” and also called the Intermezzo “a grey pearl. Do you know them? They look as if they were veiled, and are very precious.” Brahms also used the title “Intermezzo” for the second piece, an agitated piece in E minor that ingeniously employs the variation form. The central “waltz” section in E major provides a wonderful contrast, though it too is a variation. A wisp of the waltz returns at the close. The following quicksilver Intermezzo features the melody at the outset in the lower part of the right hand. Its scherzando character as abetted by the shifting melodic accents. The ebullient E-flat Rhapsody, probably not the last of the pieces in order of composition, is notable for its five-bar phrases, which Clara characterized as “Hungarian.” At the center occurs a lyrical section in A-flat major—perhaps suggesting the salon or café in its arpeggiations and grace notes—that is led up to and away from by a C minor/C major triplet idea. The following occurrence of the main theme is cleverly presented in a hushed staccato variation, lending all the more force to its return in its original guise at the close. This Rhapsody belongs to a small but significant group of works that open heroically in the major but close dramatically and darkly in the minor. Other notable such pieces include Mendelssohn’s Italian Symphony and Brahms’s B major Trio. Brahms’s Rhapsody, however, accomplishes this unusual twist in one movement, thereby joining an even more select niche of the repertoire—Schubert’s E-flat Impromptu, op. 90, no. 2 is one of the few other such works that immediately comes to mind. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

May 6, 2018: Clara Neubauer, violin; Anne-Marie McDermott, piano ROBERT SCHUMANN (1810-1856) Sonata No. 1 in A minor, Op. 105 for violin and piano May 6, 2018: Clara Neubauer, violin; Anne-Marie McDermott, piano In August 1850 Schumann arrived in Düsseldorf amid great fanfare to take up the position of town music director. By the next season, however, problems had developed with management and musicians alike, augmented by his progressing mental illness. Nevertheless, he strove to improve the town’s musical life by organizing a small select group of singers and a short-lived ensemble of instrumentalists. Thus in the fall of 1851 he had vocal and instrumental chamber music on his mind. The time was now ripe to act on an 1850 request by Ferdinand David, concertmaster of the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig for a violin and piano piece. Schumann composed his first violin sonata—A minor, op. 105—between September 12 and 16, 1851, and after a pause to write the G minor Piano Trio, continued with a second—D minor, op. 121—between October 26 and November 2. Clara Schumann, her husband’s greatest champion and interpreter, immediately learned the piano part and played the first private performance of the A minor Violin Sonata on October 16 with Wilhelm Joseph von Wasielewski, Robert’s talented young concertmaster. She wrote in her diary: “We were particularly moved by the very elegiac first movement and the lovely second movement.” The third movement, she said, caused them some difficulties, and though they played it through three more times Wasielewski reported that they were unable to convey its “brusque tone” to the composer’s satisfaction. The first public performance took place on March 29 at the Leipzig Gewandhaus with David, who had first suggested such a work, and he received the dedication when Schumann published it in 1852. Clara continued to play the piece after her husband’s death, most often with the rising young star Joseph Joachim. Schumann’s first movement, designated “With passionate expression,” sets a mood of quiet unrest with the main theme beginning in the violin’s low, throaty range. Throughout the piano does not merely “arpeggiate,” but exhibits the distinctive multiple voices and textures that are quintessentially Schumann. A special feature of this movement is the masterful blurring of the border between development and recapitulation that became such a Romantic art. The Allegretto shows the intimate charm of many of Schumann’s piano miniatures. Twice he interrupts with contrasting episodes—the first in the contemplative manner of Eusebius, the introverted fictional character of his prose and musical writings, and the second à la Florestan, his happy, extroverted persona. The finale cavorts like a scherzo, but with a demonic cast, as opposed to the elfin scherzos characteristic of Schumann’s contemporary Mendelssohn. A wonderful major-mode middle episode imparts a lyrical warmth to offset the more “brusque” drive of the main theme. Toward the end Schumann shows his concern for unity across movements by reintroducing the low restless main theme of the first movement before the final fiendish push to the close. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

September 25, 2016: Jason Vieaux, guitar; Escher String Quartet LUIGI BOCCHERINI (1743-1805) Quintet in D for guitar and string September 25, 2016: Jason Vieaux, guitar; Escher String Quartet Boccherini achieved widespread recognition in his day both as a cellist and as an extremely prolific composer, primarily of chamber music. He wrote more than 100 string quintets, close to 100 string quartets, and some 150 other chamber works, including more than thirty cello sonatas. He became especially celebrated for his string quintets in the two-violin, viola, two-cello configuration, contributing more to the genre than any other composer in history. Many of them were written while he served as “virtuoso of the chamber and composer of music” at the Aranjuez court of the Infante Don Luis, younger brother of the king of Spain. The quintets were to be played by a court quartet made up of the Font family, father and three sons, plus Boccherini himself. The renown Boccherini enjoyed in his prime is attested to by the remarks of the typically cautious Charles Burney, famed eighteenth-century historian, who rated him “among the greatest masters who have ever written for the violin or violoncello,” placing him second only to Haydn. The taste for Boccherini’s elegant, galant style waned, however, and he died in Madrid in poverty. Many gaps exist in our knowledge of Boccherini’s life and works, made worse by the destruction of many of his manuscripts and his own thematic catalog in Madrid during the Spanish Civil War. The latter half of the twentieth century witnessed a periodic resurgence of interest in his music: Gérard’s thematic catalog was published in 1969, and hence the “G.” in the listings of the composer’s works. A complete edition was begun in the 1970s, and a manuscript containing eighteen cello sonatas—three not known since Boccerini’s time—was discovered in 1982; yet most of his music awaits rediscovery. Boccherini mentioned in a letter to the publisher Pleyel in December 1798 that he had just completed six guitar quintets—guitar with string quartet—for the Marquis de Bénavent, for which the guitar-playing Marquis apparently paid the composer 100 francs apiece. These Quintets were most likely those that survive in a copy made in the 1820s by François de Fossa, a military man who was also a talented guitarist and composer. The present D major Quintet, which is fourth in that collection, is the only one of the six that also survives in another manuscript. It was published together with two other guitar quintets (different than those for the Marquis) in 1925 in Leipzig. The Marquis’s Quintets were not published until 1973, after the enterprising Ruggero Chiesa located them in the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Following a common practice of the period, Boccherini adapted material from earlier sources to fulfill the Marquis’s commission. Thus he transcribed the Pastorale and the Allegro maestoso of the D major Guitar Quintet from the first two movements of a 1771 String Quintet in the same key (G. 270, op. 12, no. 6); the Grave assai and the colorful Fandango he borrowed from the opening of another D major String Quintet (G. 341, op. 50, no. 2), written in 1788. Together these movements make a stellar guitar quintet—the last movement, the Fandango, is perhaps even more fitting with guitar as one of the instruments rather than a second cello as in the original. The Pastorale is a lovely movement, with the sweetness of parallel thirds and the lilting rhythms in 6/8 meter that one would expect from the genre. Characteristic of all Boccherini’s guitar quintets, the guitar alternates between passages in which it takes a leading role and passages in which it accompanies the bowed strings. The cello is particularly featured in the Allegro maestoso, at the outset and later in its highest register, reminding us of Boccherini’s prowess as a cellist. The Grave assai serves as the slow introduction to the crowning Fandango, which begins softly enough, but erupts into a high-spirited affair. Boccherini even adds actual castanets to the accompaniment as in the folk-dance models of his adopted country of Spain. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

January 4, 2015 – Emerson String Quartet WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756-1791) String Quartet in G major, K. 387 January 4, 2015 – Emerson String Quartet One of Mozart’s most earthshaking developments musically upon his move from his native Salzburg to Vienna in 1781 was meeting Joseph Haydn for the first time and hearing the older composer’s Opus 33 Quartets. The profound influence of these works on the younger composer resulted in his composing six Quartets—the first three between December 1782 and July 1783 and the second three between November 1784 and January 1785. He dedicated these “fruits of a long and arduous labor” to his esteemed friend saying, “During your last stay in this capital you yourself, my dear friend, expressed to me your approval of these compositions. Your good opinion encourages me to offer them to you and leads me to hope that you will not consider them wholly unworthy of your favor.” In fact, on that occasion in 1785 when Haydn had heard Wolfgang, his father Leopold, and two friends play these Quartets, Haydn had told Leopold: “I tell you before God as an honest man that your son is the greatest composer known to me either in person or by reputation. He has taste, and what is more, the most profound knowledge of composition.” Haydn’s Opus 33 Quartets, which he himself had said were written “in an entirely new manner,” influenced Mozart particularly in their new equality of part-writing for the four individual instruments and their treatment of thematic elaboration as a integral part of a whole work rather than belonging only to traditional development sections. Mozart’s Haydn Quartets show these elements in abundance along with his own inspired brand of grace and inventiveness. Mozart completed the G major Quartet, K. 387, the first of the Haydn Quartets, on December 31, 1782. The stunning variety of the four movements and their combined effusive optimism have made this perhaps the most popular quartet of the six. The first movement revels in contrasts—soft and loud, determined and tender, ascending and descending, diatonic and chromatic. The opening gesture’s forthrightness followed by its gentle tag immediately demonstrates this, as does the contrast between the entire first theme and the gently marching second theme with its repeated notes. Not only is the development remarkable for Mozart’s ingenious spinning out of these ideas, but the recapitulation delights in further elaboration. The Menuetto takes dynamic contrast to a new level of detail when, following two graceful downward leaps, his chromatic lines alternate soft and loud with every note. As a counterbalance Mozart introduces a second theme—as part of this section’s miniature sonata form—now featuring repeated notes followed by chromatic descents. Drama explodes in the trio in minor-key unison where one might often find more pastoral repose. By now we expect dynamic contrast, which certainly abounds in the slow movement, though with a preponderance of quiet that is especially striking at the close of the first phrase. What becomes more salient as the movement unfolds is the contrast in textures between slow-moving lines and the fast notes of Mozart’s filigree, which is not always confined to the first violin part. A striking harmonic surprise prepares the second theme of this slow-movement sonata form (that is, exposition and recapitulation without a development section). In the recap’s brief delicate extension, Mozart emphasizes the triplet motion that had made an appearance toward the end of the first theme and become a defining feature of the second. The last movement gives us a wonderful preview of the composer’s crowning Jupiter Symphony, both in its four-note theme and in its fugal (imitative) treatment. The miracle of Mozart’s fugal style here comes in the ease with which he switches back and forth between contrapuntal and homophonic texture (melody and accompaniment). Thus his fugal writing becomes an enticing propellant rather than an academic exercise. These effortless shifts of style correspond to structural divisions in which the fugal texture presents the main thematic material of sonata form, and the homophonic texture the transitional and cadential material. Mozart takes his leave with a nice Haydnesque touch—forceful, seemingly conclusive chords that then give way to the quiet “true” ending. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes