SUNDAY, JANUARY 14, 2024 AT 4 PM GOLDMUND STRING QUARTET Musical Love Letters “The Goldmund Quartet are a class act…they delivered a triumphant performance — Edinburgh Music Review ABOUT THE PERFORMANCE BUY TICKETS Fast-rising stars in the string quartet firmament, the Munich-based Goldmund Quartet has garnered worldwide acclaim for their deep musicality and astounding ensemble prowess. In recent seasons, they have won first prizes in international competitions in London, Germany, and Melbourne. Following the Goldmund’s triumphant 2019 tour of Japan, the Nippon Music Foundation awarded them the use of Antonio Stradivari’s matched quartet of string instruments once possessed by the legendary violinist Niccolò Paganini. For their Parlance debut, the Goldmund Quartet will perform quartet masterpieces by Alexander Borodin, Anton Webern, and Robert Schumann . 2023-2024 SEASON October 15, 202 3 Lysander Piano Trio November 12, 2023 Angel Blue, soprano Bryan Wagorn, piano December 3, 2023 Brentano String Quartet Antioch Chamber Choir January 14, 2024 Goldmund String Quartet February 18, 2024 Candlelit Music of The Spirit March 10, 2024 Richard Goode, Piano Late Beethoven April 7, 2024 Jordi Savall, Conductor Hespèrion XXI May 12, 2024 Mothers Day Concert June 2, 2024 Mozart’s Double Concertos 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 Goldmund Quartet PROGRAM Anton Webern: Program Notes Langsamer Satz Alexander Borodin: Program Notes String Quartet No. 2 in D Robert Schumann: String Quartet No. 3 in A, Op. 41/3 Program Notes Watch the Goldmund Quartet perform the first movement of Mendelssohn’s String Quartet in F minor, Op. 80:

February 26, 2017: Emanuel Ax, piano FREDERIC CHOPIN (1810-1849) Four Impromptus, Opp. 29, 36, 51, & 66 February 26, 2017: Emanuel Ax, piano Between 1834 and 1842 Chopin composed four impromptus (opp. 66, 29, 36, and 51 in that order), which, though conceived as separate pieces, share certain thematic material and a basic ternary shape (ABA). For Chopin, imprompt u did not mean a piece of an improvisatory nature but rather a character piece—a common if vague nineteenth-century designation—and his impromptus show evidence that he revised his materials more than once before arriving at their final form. Chopin composed his so-called Fantasy-Impromptu in C-sharp minor c. 1834 , but decided not to publish it for unknown reasons. He himself called the piece an “impromptu,” but his friend Julian Fontana added “fantasy” to the title when he published it in 1855, six years after Chopin’s death. (An alternate version was also published from a presentation manuscript Chopin made for dedicatee Baroness d’Este.) In 1834 Chopin had not yet solidified what “impromptu” meant for him personally as a genre. He had recently published his Etudes, op. 10, and this first Impromptu belongs to that world. It also shows indebtedness to the Impromptu in E-flat major, op. 89, by Ignaz Moscheles and to Schubert’s Impromptu, op. 90, no. 2. (It has been suggested that similarities to the Moscheles Impromptu may have been a reason for withholding it from publication, but that notion is contradicted by the fact that he published other pieces modeled on those by Moscheles.) The C-sharp minor Impromptu continues to be one of Chopin’s most popular pieces. It unfolds in a simple ternary form whose outer sections feature rippling figuration from which a melody in longer notes emerges. The slower middle section offers an expansive, lyrical melody (later appropriated for the pop song “I’m Always Chasing Rainbows”), which Chopin treats several times at leisure before returning the scurrying opening section. He also recalls the tune in his ruminating coda. By 1837, when Chopin wrote his second Impromptu in A-flat major , he demonstrated his clear personal definition of the genre by modeling the piece on his own unpublished C-sharp minor Impromptu. Many commentators have pointed out similarities between the two in regard to formal design, texture, and details of phrase structure and motives. That this was a time of despair for Chopin, when his hopes of marrying Maria Wodziński were crushed, contrasts markedly with the effervescent atmosphere of this piece’s outer sections. The middle section becomes more ruminative but hardly brooding. Especially memorable are the cascading chromatics of the “A” sections and the harmonic digressions and melodic embellishments of the “B” section. Chopin composed the third Impromptu in F-sharp minor in 1839 at Nohant, the country estate of writer George Sand (pseudonym of Amantine-Lucile-Aurore Dupin), with whom he had by now become romantically involved. Chopin scholar Jim Samson has argued persuasively that “this piece was the single most important harbinger of Chopin’s later style” in its variation style that is built on an ostinato (repeating pattern), its march-like middle section, and the threefold variation of the reprise. The manuscript reveals that the form of this prophetic composition caused Chopin a great struggle. Some of the most striking features of the piece are the astonishing tonal wrench to the unexpected key of F major for the return of the opening theme and the amazing figuration as the theme is varied—finger exercises transformed into magical effects. The delicate, harmonically adventurous fourth Impromptu in G-flat major , Chopin’s personal favorite, dates from the summer of 1842 at Nohant, polished the following autumn/winter. It exists in two versions, one transmitted through his onetime pupil Carl Filtsch, who copied it out either by ear or from a manuscript in 1841. If by ear, he hadn’t remembered how Chopin exquisitely varied the main theme in thirds and sixths on its later appearances, and, if copying from a manuscript, he must have been looking at a version from before Chopin arrived at this imaginative stroke. Chopin likely modeled his G-flat major Impromptu, especially the figuration of the outer sections, on his A-flat major Impromptu. The fourth Impromptu’s outer sections are striking for their ethereal rising scales before certain phrase endings, the adventurous harmonies of their transition passage, and a new second theme. In the slower middle section Chopin features a singing, contemplative melody in the cello register. The sophistication of his harmonies and intricately interconnected flow of ideas make it clear why Chopin favored this Impromptu and regrettable that it has often been overlooked. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

ABOUT THE 2009-2010 SEASON 2009-2010 SEASON 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

March 19, 2023 – Rachel Naomi Kudo, piano JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685-1750) Sheep May Safely Graze, BWV 208 (arr. Petri) March 19, 2023 – Rachel Naomi Kudo, piano Our discussion of the present three Bach transcriptions must begin with Ferrucio Busoni, who was Egon Petri’s teacher. As a youth Busoni adored Bach above all other composers, a passion that endured throughout his life. He not only drew on Bach’s music for inspiration in his own works but he issued a monumental edition of Bach’s solo keyboard works transcribed for piano—a twenty-five volume collection plus a seven-volume set—aided by his students Egon Petri and Bruno Mugellini. So synonymous did Bach and Busoni become in the public’s mind that on Busoni’s first American tour his wife Gerda was once introduced by a society matron as “Mrs. Bach-Busoni.” This anecdote was related by Petri, a superb German pianist of Dutch descent, who began studying with Busoni in Weimar in 1901. Petri eventually settled in the United States, taught at Mills College, and authored many Bach transcriptions at Busoni’s behest. Busoni issued his Bach edition in two collections: the twenty-five-volume Klavierwerke, and the seven-volume Bach-Busoni edition. Although Busoni’s name appears on each volume of the Klavierwerke, many were edited by Petri and a few by Bruno Mugellini. Petri had expected Busoni to supervise his and Mugellini’s editorial work and they strove to operate under his principles and to emulate his style, yet Busoni concerned himself very little with reading their proofs, much to Petri’s surprise. Busoni strove to remain true to the essence of Bach’s music in his transcriptions, but inevitably his own Romantic sensibilities crept in with his addition of tempo and pedal markings, dynamics, register changes, repeats, and performance suggestions. Nevertheless, these transcriptions are rewarding additions to the piano repertoire. Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ—which appears as No. 5 in Busoni’s collection of Ten Chorale Preludes (1898) and No. 41 (BWV 639) in Bach’s Orgel-Büchlein (Little Organ Book)—has become a favorite of pianists and audiences for its poignant serenity. Flowing arpeggios in the middle voice accompany the tender, mostly unadorned chorale melody, supported by a steady “walking bass.” Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme is actually Busoni’s transcription of what was already a transcription by Bach himself. In 1731 Bach had composed the fourth movement of his Cantata 140 (Wachet auf) in chorale-prelude style with tenor(s) taking the chorale melody, surrounded by a a lyrical countermelody for upper strings in unison and supported by continuo (bass line and harmony). Thus it was a simple task to transfer all three parts to organ, which he did in BWV 645, one of a group of six late works that became known as the “Schübler Chorales” after their publication by Johann Georg Schübler in 1748–49. Busoni’s transcription for piano, No. 2 in his Ten Chorale Preludes, maintains the lilting flow in the upper line against the steady chorale in the middle voice. Turning to the first piece of the group of transcriptions, Egon Petri arranged his version of Schafe können sicher weiden (Sheep may safely graze) not from a chorale preude by Bach but rather a soprano aria from Cantata 208 Was mir behagt, ist nur die muntre Jagd! (What pleases me is above all the lively hunt). Bach wrote secular cantatas for aristocratic patrons to celebrate special occasions such as birthdays, name days, and accession days, or for academic ceremonies, and he composed Cantata 208 on a text by Weimar court poet Salomo Franck for the birthday of Duke Christian Weissenfels in 1713. Known as the Hunt Cantata, it contains “Schafe können sicher weiden,” the well-known aria for Pales, second soprano to Diana, goddess of the hunt. For centuries listeners have been captivated by its texture of rocking parallel thirds for two flutes—the quintessential pastoral instrument—accompanying the tender main melody, which praises Duke Christian for ruling his people as a good shepherd. The lovely aria has been transcribed for countless times for various performing forces, among the first—Percy Grainger’s for band (1931), Mary Howe’s for solo piano and two pianos (1935), and William Walton’s for orchestra (1940). Egon Petri’s transcription, published in 1944 has become the best-known transcription for piano. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

Development Director Inmo Parloff Leadership Council Thomas and Heidi Ahlborn Anne Bosch William and Zitta Chapman Catherine Coo ke Christina Hembree Adrian and Christina Jones Ronald and Mollie Ledwith Youngick and Joyce Lee Carol Martin Dorothy Neff Suzanne Taranto Donald and Gigo Taylor Richard and Michelle Vaccaro

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< Back Franz & Karl Doppler Rigoletto Fantasie for 2 flutes & piano Seth Morris & Maron Anis Khoury, flutes; Bryan Wagorn, piano Program Notes Previous Next

March 9, 2025: Ravel’s 150th Birthday Concert, with Erika Baikoff, Soprano; Soohong Park, piano Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) Shéherazade for soprano and piano March 9, 2025: Ravel’s 150th Birthday Concert, with Erika Baikoff, Soprano; Soohong Park, piano While still a student at the Paris Conservatory in 1899, Ravel conceived an opera to be based on the tales of the Thousand and One Nights . Well-aware of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade (1888), Ravel wrote his own Shéhérazade Overture based on the legends, but the work’s lack of success when Ravel conducted it that June gave him pause, and he prohibited it from being published. Then in 1903 he was inspired to set three poems by fellow member of the Apache society Tristan Klingsor (pseudonym of Leon Leclerc), whose cycle entitled Shéhérazade had just been published. Wrote Leclerc: Ravel immediately announced his intent of setting some of my poems into music. His love of difficulty led him to choose, in addition to “L’indifférent and La flûte enchantée , one which, by reason of its length and narrative form, seemed the least likely suited for his purpose: Asie . The fact is that at this time he was extremely preoccupied with the challenge of adapting music to speech, heightening its accents and inflections and magnifying them by adapting them into melody; and to assist him to carry out his project he asked me to read the poems out loud to him. Like much of France and other European countries at the turn of the twentieth century, Ravel was fascinated with evocations of the Far East. The interest was not so much a kind of armchair tourism, but rather represented in the words of musicologist Kurt Oppens—whose knowledge of French poetry was second to none—“the decadence of a hypercivilized culture.” Worth quoting at length, Oppens wrote: Concerning decadence : all such once-fashionable catch names and slogans isolate one single element that, in truth, is common to all art. Every new style is “decadent” in the sense that it pays the price of progress by falling off from a previous achievement. Ravel’s Shéhérazade , however, is decadence with a capital D, a prototypical example of what Decadence as a movement was about. The kind of travel described in a poem such as Asie leads out of the boundaries of the self into archetypal images, a world of subconscious dreams, or eroticism and murder, a mixture that in its concrete political embodiments, led to the unspeakable tragedies of [the twentieth] century. . . . The emotonal-musical climax coincides with these words: “Je voudrais voir des rose et du sang; / Je voudrais voir mourir d’amour ou bien de haine .” (I would like to see roses and blood; / I would like to see those who die for love or else for hate.” . . . The “I” of Leclerc’s poem does not think of dying; he is looking at death and responding to it as if it were a stimulant, an aphrodisiac. . . . Ravel’s music for “Asie” is essentially one big rolling wave, a masterfully articulated and controlled crescendo and decrescendo. (The element of control is of course non-decadent; decadent art is in itself a contradictory or dialectical proposition.) It is fascinating that when Ravel conducted these songs himself, he began with “Le flûte enchantée,” followed by “L’indifférent,” and ended with “Asie,” as in the order of the premiere, which was sung by Jane Hatto of the Paris Opéra on May 17, 1904, with Alfred Cortot conducting the orchestra of the Société Nationale. The published order makes for a more subdued ending, in keeping with the intimate love songs of “La flûte enchantée” and “L’indifférent.” Of the two shorter songs, “La flûte enchantée” offers an intimate melody—often sad, occasionally joyful—evoking the thoughts of the poem’s slave girl, who in her master’s house hears her lover playing the flute. “L’indifferent” also unfolds as a private love song, one shrouded in an air of mystery both as to the poem and Ravel’s setting. Is the protagonist Scherherazade herself seducing a young boy or is the androgenous nature of the addressee something that attracted Ravel? Whatever the case, Ravel skillfully captures the elusive, maybe dreamed or imagined-from-afar seductiveness of the poem. —©Jane Vial Jaffe Texts and Translations Asie Asie, Asie, Asie, Vieux pays merveilleux des contes de nourrice Où dort la fantasie comme une impératrice En sa forêt tout emplie de mystère. Asie, Je voudrais m'en aller avec la goélette Qui se berce ce soir dans la port, Mystérieuse et solitaire, Et qui déploie enfin ses voiles violettes Comme un immense oiseau de nuit dans le ciel d’or. Je voudrais m’en aller vers des îles de fleurs En écoutant chanter la mer perverse Sur un vieux rythme ensorceleur, Je voudrais voir Damas et les villes de Perse Avec les minarets légers dans l’air, Je voudrais voir de beaux turbans de soie Sur des visages noirs aux dents claires; Je voudrais voir des yeux sombres d’amour Et des prunelles brillantes de joie En des peaux jaunes comme des oranges; Je voudrais voir des vêtements de velours Et des habits à longues franges, Je voudrais voir des calumets entre les bouches Tout entourées de barbe blanche; Je voudrais voir d’âpres marchands aux regards louches, Et des cadis, et des vizirs Qui du seul mouvement de leur doigt qui se penche Accordent vie ou mort au gré de leur désir. Je voudrais voir la Perse, et l’Inde, et puis la Chine, Les mandarins ventrus sous les ombrelles, Et les princesses aux mains fines, Et les lettrés qui se querellent Sur la poésie et sur la beauté; Je voudrais m’attarder au palais enchanté Et comme voyageur étranger Contempler à loisir des paysages peints Sur des étoffes en des cadres de sapin Avec un personnage au milieu d’un verger; Je voudrais voir des assassins souriant Du bourreau qui coupe un cou d’innocent Avec son grand sabre courbé d’Orient, Je voudrais voir des pauvres et des reines; Je voudrais voir des roses et du sang; Je voudrais voir mourir d’amour ou bien de haine. Et puis m’en revenir plus tard Narrer mon aventure aux curieux de rêves En élevant comme Sinbad ma vieille tasse arabe De temps en temps jusqu’à mes lèvres Pour interrompre le conte avec art . . . La flûte enchantée L’ombre est douce et mon maître dort Coiffé d’un bonnet comique de soie Et son long nez jaune en sa barbe blanche. Mais moi, je suis éveillée encor Et j’écoute au dehors Une chanson de flûte où s’épanche Tour à tour la tristesse ou la joie. Un air tour à tour langoureux ou frivole Que mon amoureux chéri joue. Et quand je m’approche de la croisée Il me semble que chaque note s’envole De la flûte vers ma joue Comme un mystérieux baiser. L’indifférent Tes yeux sont doux comme ceux d’une fille, Jeune étranger, et la courbe fine De ton beau visage de duvet ombragé Est plus séduisante encor de ligne. Ta lèvre chante sur le pas de ma porte Une lange inconnue et charmante Comme une musique fausse. Entre! Et que mon vin te réconforte . . . Mais non, tu passes Et de mon seuil je te vois t’éloigner Me faisant un dernier geste avec grâce Et la hanche légèrement ployée Par ta démarche féminine et lasse . . . —Tristan Klingsor Asia Asia, Asia, Asia, Ancient, marvelous country of fairy tales, where fantasy sleeps like an empress in her forest filled with mystery. Asia, I would like go away with the ship which is rocking this evening in the port, mysterious and lonely, and which finally spreads its violet sails like an immense bird of night in the golden sky. I would like to go towards the islands of flowers, while listening to the wayward sea sing to an old bewitching rhythm. I would like to see Damascus and the Persian cities with airy minarets rising into the sky. I would like to see beautiful silk turbans above black faces with bright teeth; I would like to see eyes dark with love and pupils shining with joy in faces with skins yellow as oranges; I would like to see velvet clothes and robes with long fringes, I would like to see pipes held between lips all surrounded by white beards; I would like to see harsh merchants with shifty looks, and cadis, and viziers, who with a single movement of their bending fingers, grant life or death according to their wish. I would like to see Persia, and India, and then China, The pot-bellied mandarins beneath the umbrellas, and the princesses with fine hands, and the scholars who quarrel over poetry and beauty; I would like to linger at the enchanted palace and as a foreign traveler contemplate at leisure countrysides painted on fabrics in frames of fir with a figure in the midst of an orchard; I would like to see smiling assassins, the executioner who cuts an innocent neck with his great curved sabre from the Orient. I would like to see beggars and queens; I would like to see roses and blood; I would like to see those who die of love or hate. And then come back later narrate my adventure to those curious of dreams while raising like Sinbad my old Arab cup from time to time to my lips to interrupt the tale with artistry . . . The Enchanted Flute The shadow is soft and my master sleeps wearing a comical bonnet of silk and his long yellow nose in his white beard. But I, I am still awake, and I hear outside a flute song in which pours out sadness or joy in turn. An air sometimes languorous, sometimes frivolous that my dear lover plays. And when I draw near the window, it seems to me that each note flies away from the flute to my cheek like a mysterious kiss. The Indifferent One Your eyes are soft like those of a girl, young stranger, and the fine curve of your beautiful face shadowed with down is still more seductive in its curve. Your lip sings on my doorstep an unknown and charming language like a false music. Enter! And let my wine refresh you . . . But no, you pass, and from my doorstep I see you leaving making a last gesture with grace and your hips gently swaying, with your feminine and languid walk . . . Return to Parlance Program Notes

MARK HOLLOWAY, VIOLA Violist Mark Holloway is a chamber musician sought after in the United States and abroad. He has appeared at prestigious festivals such as Marlboro, Music@Menlo, Ravinia, Caramoor, Banff, Cartagena, Taos, Music from Angel Fire, Mainly Mozart, Music at Plush, and the Boston Chamber Music Society. Performances have taken him to far-flung places such as Chile and Greenland, and he plays regularly at chamber music festivals in France and Switzerland, and at the International Musicians Seminar in Prussia Cove, England. Around New York City, he frequently appears as a guest with the New York Philharmonic and Orpheus. Mr. Holloway has been principal violist at Tanglewood and of the New York String Orchestra, and has played as guest principal of the American Symphony, the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, Camerata Bern, and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. He has performed at Bargemusic, the 92nd Street Y, the Casals Festival in Puerto Rico, and on radio and television throughout North and South America, and in Europe, most recently a Live From Lincoln Center broadcast. Hailed as an “outstanding violist” by American Record Guide, and praised by Zürich’s Neue Zürcher Zeitung for his “warmth and intimacy,” he has recorded for the Marlboro Recording Society, CMS Live, Music@Menlo LIVE, Naxos, and Albany labels. An artist of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Mr. Holloway was a student of Michael Tree at The Curtis Institute of Music and received his bachelor’s degree from Boston University.

OLIVER NEUBAUER, VIOLIN (2021) Praised for his sensitive and uniquely beautiful playing, twenty-year-old violinist Oliver Neubauer is establishing himself as an artist of great emotional depth and maturity beyond his years. This summer, Oliver is grateful for the opportunity to perform live music for socially distanced audiences at the Bravo! Vail music festival, collaborating with the Dover Quartet and artistic director Anne-Marie McDermott, among others. In the upcoming season, Oliver will make his debut with the Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players and return to Parlance Chamber Concerts. Appearances at Cape Cod Music Festival and Chamber Music Northwest as a protegé artist were unfortunately canceled due to the Coronavirus pandemic. Oliver has been invited to attend the Perlman Music Program Chamber Workshop and Verbier Festival Academy in the summer of 2021. Past seasons have included appearances at the Four Seasons Winter Workshop, Palm Beach Chamber Music Society, Bravo! Vail, YoungArts Miami, Parlance Chamber Concerts, If Music Be the Food NYC, Mostly Music Series, Summerfest La Jolla, Music@Menlo, Lake Champlain Music Festival, OKM Music Festival, Chamber Music Northwest, Music in the Vineyards, Art in Avila in Curaçao, and Music from Angel Fire. Oliver has performed at Carnegie’s Weill Recital Hall on numerous occasions as well as Symphony Space, the American Museum of Natural History, Neue Gallery, Alice Tully Hall, and David Geffen Hall. Oliver also performed with his sister Clara at the Waldorf Astoria for a 9/11 Memorial and Museum Benefit Dinner, where they shared the stage with Robert De Niro and Bernadette Peters. At the age of twelve years old, Oliver attended the Music@Menlo program for the first time and played Mozart’s E-flat Piano Quartet, an experience that sparked a deep passion for chamber music that remains with him to this day. Since then, Oliver returned to Menlo for three more summers, was a member of the New York Youth Symphony Chamber Music Program from 2013-2015, performed at Juilliard ChamberFest in 2017, and attended the Four Seasons Winter Workshop in 2019 and 2020. Coming from a musical home, Oliver performs frequently with his father Paul Neubauer, mother Kerry McDermott, and sister Clara Neubauer. He has also collaborated and performed with many esteemed artists, including Carter Brey, Fred Sherry, Ani Kavafian, Michael Kannen, Kwan Yi, Ara Gregorian, Sophie Shao, Carmit Zori, the Ulysses Quartet, Axel Strauss, and Steve Tenenbom. As a soloist, Oliver has appeared with numerous orchestras, including the National Repertory Orchestra, the Sound Symphony Orchestra (as winner of their 2016 competition), the New York Concerti Sinfonietta, and the Symphony of Westchester (as winner of their 2018 competition). Oliver received the Gold Award at the 2018 National YoungArts Competition and has garnered top prizes in the 2020 Adelphi Competition, the 2017 Young Musicians Competition at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and the Artist in You Competition sponsored by the Doublestop Foundation, among others. In the summer of 2019, Oliver spent a week in Sao Paulo, Brazil, working with the Guri youth string orchestra and teaching masterclasses. Deeply inspired by the spirit of music making during the exchange program, Oliver hopes to recreate that atmosphere of genuine passion, joy, and curiosity in communities around the world. Oliver has also donated his services to organizations such as Save the Children, Concerts in Motion, Lenox Hill Neighborhood House, Little Orchestra Society, Goddard Riverside Community Center, and Temple Israel. In 2013, Oliver made his debut with the New York Philharmonic as the narrator for Britten’s Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra in a YPC. Outside of music, Oliver loves playing chess (having competed in dozens of national tournaments), playing ping pong, eating freshly baked cookies, and discussing philosophy. Currently obsessed with the soundtrack of “Fiddler on the Roof,” Oliver spends an abnormal amount of time listening to the entire album on Spotify. Oliver attends the Juilliard School in New York City, where he studies with Itzhak Perlman and Li Lin and is a proud recipient of the Kovner Fellowship. Prior to his studies at Juilliard, Oliver attended the Dalton School, Juilliard Pre-College, and the Perlman Music Program. Previous teachers include Sophie Arbuckle and Arik Braude. Oliver plays a 1734 Matteo Goffriller violin, generously on loan to him from the Juilliard String Instrument Collection.

September 25, 2016: Jason Vieaux, guitar; Escher String Quartet ALAN JAY KERNIS 100 Greatest Dance Hits September 25, 2016: Jason Vieaux, guitar; Escher String Quartet Aaron Jay Kernis came to national attention as a twenty-three-year-old composer in 1983 when the New York Philharmonic premiered his Dream of the Morning Sky. He went on to receive the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for his String Quartet No. 2, “Musica instrumentalis,” and the 2002 Grawemeyer Award for Colored Field for cello and orchestra (originally an English horn concerto). In both cases he was the youngest composer to win these prestigious awards. His highly imaginative, sophisticated yet accessible works have been commissioned and performed by a pantheon of music organizations, ensembles, and soloists. Growing up in Philadelphia, Kernis first studied violin, then taught himself piano at age twelve, and turned to composition the following year. He studied with John Adams at the San Francisco Conservatory, Charles Wuorinen at the Manhattan School of Music, and Jacob Druckman and Morton Subotnick at Yale University. He describes his wide-ranging influences as embracing everything from “Gertrude Stein to hard-edged rap to the diaphanous musical canvas of Claude Debussy.” He has taught at the Yale School of Music since 2003, has directed the Minnesota Orchestra Composer Institute, and held composer residencies with Astral Artists, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Albany Symphony, Minnesota Public Radio, and the American Composers Forum. In the early 1990s many of Kernis’s compositions were concerned with dark images: his Second Symphony (1992) dealt with the Gulf War, Still Movement with Hymn (1993) with World War II and the Holocaust, and Colored Field (originally 1994) reflected his visits to the Auschwitz and Birkenau death camps. But his varied and colorful writing has also encompassed the humorous—The Four Seasons of Futurist Cuisine, and the erotic—Goblin Market, based on Christina Rossetti’s moody poem. More recently, for Renée Fleming he composed the alternately ferocious and lyrical Valentines (2000) on the feminist texts of Carol Ann Duffy, Newly Drawn Sky (2006) in honor of James Conlon’s first season as director of the Ravinia Festival, and his Viola Concerto (2014) for Paul Neubauer and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. Most recently Marina Piccinini and the Detroit Symphony premiered his Flute Concerto in January 2016. Kernis composed 100 Greatest Dance Hits in 1993, intending it as a celebration of popular styles of the ’90s, but he admits that sounds of the ’70s occurred to him more as he composed. The piece was premiered on September 3, 1993, for the tenth anniversary of the Music from Angel Fire Festival (New Mexico) by guitarist David Tanenbaum, violinists Ida and Ani Kavafian, violist Scott St. John and cellist Christopher Costanza. Said Kernis, “I borrowed the title from those old K-Tel advertisements on late-night TV for 100 Greatest Motown Hits or 100 Greatest Soul Hits.” The piece unfolds in four movements, drawing on popular styles ranging from salsa and rap to disco and easy listening. The short, rhythmic introduction has the string players producing all manner of unconventional sounds. The ensuing “minuet/scherzo” movement features captivating dance gestures, drawing its title, Salsa Pasada (“Rancid Salsa”) from a pun on old-fashioned salsa dancing and the condiment when it is past its prime. Kernis drew on this movement for the finale of his 1997 Guitar Concerto. Kernis entitled the contemplative slow movement (also refashioned for his Guitar Concerto) “MOR Easy Listening Slow Dance”—MOR referring to the “middle-of-the-road” kind of music his parents would like—“what they hope to find on the radio dial.” The driven finale’s impetus came from the television show Soul Train, with its over three decades of R&B, soul, hip-hop, and disco. Kernis simply substituted modes of transportation in his title—a boat for a train: Dance Party on the Disco Motorboat. The striking conclusion was inspired, said Kernis, by “kids on the subways doing intricate rap rhythms vocally, playing on their bodies even, so that the different syllables they were using and the different sounds they were making sounded like specific percussion instruments.” © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

ALEXI KENNEY, VIOLIN Violinist Alexi Kenney is forging a career that defies categorization, following his interests, intuition, and heart. Alexi has appeared as soloist with the Cleveland Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony, Detroit Symphony, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, and St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, among many others, and in recital at Wigmore Hall, Carnegie Hall, Princeton University Concerts, the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festival, and the Phillips Collection. A passionate advocate for music of our time, Alexi has commissioned major works for the violin from composers including Salina Fisher, Angélica Negrón, and Paul Wiancko, and is constantly incorporating new works into his repertoire. Alexi regularly appears at chamber music festivals including Bridgehampton, Kronberg, Ojai, Seattle, and Spoleto, on tour with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and Musicians from Marlboro, and as a member of the quartet collective Owls. A recipient of a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award and an Avery Fisher Career Grant, he has been profiled by the New York Times and Strings magazine, and written for The Strad. Born in Palo Alto, California, Alexi is a graduate of the New England Conservatory, where he studied with Donald Weilerstein and Miriam Fried. He plays a violin made in London by Stefan-Peter Greiner in 2009.