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| Andrew Armstrong |
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| Jennifer Frautschi |
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| Laura Frautschi |
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| Karen Gomyo |
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| Nicholas Cords |
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| Max Mandel |
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| Alexis Pia Gerlach |
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| Edward Arron |
JULY 27 CARAMOOR VIRTUOSI II
Sunday, 4:30pm
Venetian Theater
Tickets: $40.00, $32.50, $25.00, $17.50
Sample a Virtuosi Performance - LISTEN NOW
Andrew Armstrong, piano; Jennifer Frautschi, violin; Laura Frautschi, violin; Karen Gomyo, violin, Nicholas Cords, viola; Max Mandel, viola, Alexis Pia Gerlach, cello; Edward Arron, cello
Quartet, Quintet, Sextet… Delightfully diverse, this program was a perfect vehicle for the Virtuosi’s captivating and versatile music-making. Opening with the flavor of a Schubertiade, the Five German Dances retain a joyful simplicity. From one of the most important living American composers, John Harbison’s Piano Quintet delves into a vast, yet subtle range of emotions. Dvorak’s Sextet for Strings fuses the folk-inspired idioms of his native Bohemia with the beauty of Viennese lyricism.
Introduce your family to Caramoor. Purchase Concert Al Fresco tickets and enjoy the performance from the picnic grounds.
Al Fresco Tickets: $9.00
The Caramoor Virtuosi program is generously funded, in part, byThe Maximilian E. & Marion O. Hoffman Foundation.
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Franz Schubert
1797-1828
German Dances for String Quartet, D. 90
A handful of the greatest composers have also been wonderful composers of dance music; Schubert is high on that list. The reasons are not far to seek: he was able to draw from an endless stock of ingratiating melodic ideas, even when confined to the rather foursquare structure required of social dances, and to clothe them in rhythmic life. It didn’t hurt that Schubert was a highly sociable fellow, who loved helping his friends have a good time. How many Schubert dances have been lost forever because they were simply improvised on the spot, at the piano, during a merry evening? The string quartet was a useful medium for dance music, because it was so widely available, and Schubert himself produced a number of dance sets for that ensemble. In fact, on the same day—November 19, 1813—that saw the completion of the six “German” dances (another triple-meter dance more commonly known as Ländler), Schubert also completed Five Minuets with six trios. There must have been a great deal of dancing going on that November, when Schubert was two months short of his seventeenth birthday, because three days later he produced more minuets with trios (two survive and two more seem to be lost).
At this time, the minuet was on its way out as a dance still performed in a social setting (it was old-fashioned, decorous, and hard to learn). The “German dance” (Deutsche) was, like the minuet, a dance for couples in 3/4 time. It took two forms, which sometimes also used other names: the Ländler (“country dance”) involved the couples turning with their arms interlaced. The newer, more sensuous, and ultimately triumphant waltz put the couple in a close embrace, which was regarded in some circles as scandalous. But that very quality led to its long-term success, with such strength that it virtually marked the 19th century as the age of the waltz. Schubert composed waltzes, too, under that name; if he had lived much beyond 1828, we might remember him in the same breath with the Strausses as a “waltz king.”
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John Harbison
b. 1938
Piano Quintet (1981)
Pulitzer Prize- and MacArthur Fellowship-winning composer John Harbison was born in Orange, New Jersey; he lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but does much of his composing during the summer months on a farm in Token Creek, Wisconsin. After youthful studies in violin and piano and active experience in jazz, he took his undergraduate degree at Harvard and spent the summer of 1959 as a composition student at Tanglewood. He then went to Princeton for graduate study in composition with Roger Sessions; his teachers there also included Milton Babbitt and Earl Kim.
During most of the years since then he has lived and taught in the Boston area, and since 1969 he has been on the faculty of MIT, where he is the first permanent holder of the Class of 1949 Professorship. He has been Resident Composer of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He has also been active as a conductor, most notably as music director of the Cantata Singers in Boston from 1969 to 1973 and again from 1980 to 1982. (It was, appropriately, for a work commissioned by the Cantata Singers, The Flight into Egypt, that he won the Pulitzer Prize.) John Harbison’s music is “inclusive,” a natural response to his broad background, which has given him a close familiarity with everything from early music to jazz. He has not been bashful about drawing together gestures or ideas from different musical worlds when a piece seemed to call for it. In recent years he has frequently composed in “traditional” forms, finding new possibilities in such works as his five symphonies, or the large variation set for violin, clarinet, and piano. Harbison’s work covers the gamut from chamber music to opera and ballet. His opera The Great Gatsby was produced by the Metropolitan Opera at the end of 1999. Songs, choral works, chamber music, and concertos round out his voluminous oeuvre.
Harbison’s 1981 Piano Quintet was commissioned for the Santa Fe Chamber Festival and was designed to honor the great artist Georgia O’Keeffe, a native of Wisconsin (where Harbison does much of his composing), but long a resident of New Mexico (where the work was to be premiered). The first performance took place in Santa Fe on August 9, 1981, with pianist Edward Auer and a string quartet consisting of Daniel Phillips, Ani Kavafian, Walter Trampler, and Timothy Eddy.
Traditionally the piano quintet has been designed as a competition between the varied forces of the solo piano (a percussive, chordal instrument) and the string quartet (linear, contrapuntal, more lyrical in character). A classic case in point is the Opus 34 quintet of Johannes Brahms, which also served as a model—whether overt or disguised—to Boston composers of previous generations who produced pieces in the genre, among them George Chadwick and Arthur Foote. But Harbison prefers to blend the instruments into a single entity rather than to set them up in sharp opposition. The composer’s own commentary on his piece follows.
The title page of the Piano Quintet (1981) bears the following dedication: “To Georgia O’Keeffe with affection and gratitude, from the artists, directors, and friends of the Santa Fe Chamber Festival.” The piece was begun at Token Creek, Wisconsin, four miles from Sun Prairie where its dedicatee, Georgia O’Keeffe, grew up. It was completed during the spring when I was resident composer at the American Academy in Rome.
Certain aims have governed my recent work, never more than in this piece: to give the medium what it requires; to strike a balance between the hermetic and the easily reachable, and make clear form of inherently complex emotion. In looking at the work of Georgia O’Keeffe it struck me that the point of contact was this characteristically American search for clarity out of complex forces. In opening my piece I thought of the unfilled parts of her canvases, the open space, and the pleasure of leaving something out.
This opening strain dominates the first movement of the quintet in spite of the energy of the contrasting material. The amplitude of the discourse is contradicted by the three concise character pieces which follow. The final elegy is, I trust, the only direct reference to difficult circumstances under which the piece was composed, reflecting in it open – ended form the unresolved questions it poses at every turn.
- John Harbison
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Antonin Dvorak
1841-1904
Sextet for Strings in A Major, Op. 48
Dvorák began composing the Sextet on May 14, 1878, only two months after he had begun writing the first set of Slavonic Dances (published as Opus 46), which were to make him famous?and his publisher rich. The act of composition took him only two weeks. At this time he was still virtually unknown outside of Bohemia, but the Sextet proved to be his first chamber music to be performed abroad. In fact, it received its first performance in a soirée at the Berlin home of Joseph Joachim, whose string quartet (augmented by two players) introduced the work to the musical great—while the very shy thirty seven year old composer from Bohemia was astonished at being fêted by the leaders of the musical world.
The Sextet has been called a brightly colored travel poster advertising Czechoslovakia. Its popularity certainly helped spread Dvorák’s fame to other countries. The first movement is richly lyrical. Dvorák evidently enjoyed writing for this ensemble and spreading the riches of his imagination among six instruments. (As a violist himself, he knew how important it was to the performers not to give all the good tunes to the violinist!) The second movement is a Dumka, a characteristic Czech genre, in polka rhythm with a striking theme five measures long. Dvorák called the third movement a Furiant, but he did not use the three against two cross rhythm that characterizes that Czech dance; the movement is really a Scherzo-and a lively one. The finale is a set of five variations and a stretta on a theme that avoids the home key until its very end. Again conscious of the need to pass the tunes around, he introduces the theme in the violas and cellos along, and other color contrasts appear as the variations run their course. The conclusion is unbuttoned and boisterous.
© Steven Ledbetter (www.stevenledbetter.com)
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ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Edward Arron, cello ~ Cellist Edward Arron is rapidly gaining recognition worldwide for his elegant musicianship, impassioned performances, and creative programming. A native of Cincinnati, Ohio, Mr. Arron made his New York recital debut in 2000 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Earlier that year, he performed Vivaldi’s Concerto for Two Cellos with Yo-Yo Ma and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s at the Opening Night Gala of the Caramoor International Festival. Since that time, Mr. Arron has appeared in recital, as a soloist with orchestra, and as a chamber musician throughout the United States, Europe, and the Far East.
The 2007-08 season marks Mr. Arron’s fifth season as the Artistic Coordinator of the Metropolitan Museum Artists in Concert, a chamber ensemble created in 2003 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Museum’s prestigious Concerts and Lectures series. Each performance of the MMAinC is broadcast live on New York’s classical radio station, WQXR. Mr. Arron is also the Artistic Director of the Caramoor Virtuosi and of the Alpenglow Chamber Music Festival in Summit County, Colorado. For four seasons, he was the artistic administrator and resident performer for WQXR’s
On A-I-R series, a weekly radio program dedicated to chamber music.
Mr. Arron has performed numerous times at Carnegie’s Weill and Zankel Halls, Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully and Avery Fisher Halls, New York’s Town Hall, and the 92nd Street Y, and is a frequent performer at Bargemusic. Past summer festival appearances include Ravinia, Salzburg, Mostly Mozart, BRAVO! Colorado, Tanglewood, Bridgehampton, Spoleto USA, Santa Fe, the North Country Chamber Players, the Chamber Music Conference of the East, and Isaac Stern’s Jerusalem Chamber Music Encounters. Mr. Arron has participated in the Silk Road Project and is currently a member of MOSAIC, an ensemble dedicated to contemporary music.
Edward Arron began his studies on the cello at the age of seven in Cincinnati and, at ten, moved to New York, where he continued his studies with Peter Wiley. In 1998, he graduated from The Juilliard School, where he was a student of Harvey Shapiro.
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Jennifer Frautschi, violin ~ Winner of the Avery Fisher Career Grant, violinist Jennifer Frautschi has appeared as soloist in recent seasons with Pierre Boulez and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Christoph Eschenbach and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at the Ravinia Festival, Gerard Schwarz and the Seattle Symphony, and Peter Oundjian and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s at opening night of the Caramoor International Festival. Selected by Carnegie Hall for its Distinctive Debuts series, she gave her first New York recital at Weill Hall in April 2004. She also gave debut recitals in ten of Europe’s foremost concert venues, including London’s Wigmore Hall, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, La Cite de la Musique in Paris, and the Salzburg Mozarteum.
Ms. Frautschi’s 2008-09 season highlights include a three week tour of the US with the Czech Symphony Orchestra performing the Mendelssohn and Bruch Concerti, a concert at Miller Theater in New York celebrating cellist Fred Sherry’s 60th birthday with Schoenberg and Wuorinen, and chamber music festivals in Cyprus and the Czech Republic. Last season included engagements at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw playing the Beethoven Concerto; as soloist with orchestras in Germany and Russia, and with the Florida Orchestra and Madison, Phoenix, San Antonio, and Syracuse symphonies; as chamber musician at the 92nd Street Y, New York’s Metropolitan and Guggenheim Museums, Chamber Music Northwest, Moab Music Festival , Newport Music Festival, and Rome Chamber Music Festival; and a recital of all Stravinsky works for violin and piano at Miller Theater’s Stravinsky Festival.
She regularly performs at The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and Caramoor, where she has performed annually since André Previn first invited her there as a “Rising Star” in 1992. She has also performed at such chamber music festivals as La Musica (FL), Music@Menlo (CA), Santa Fe, Seattle, Spoleto (Italy), Summerfest La Jolla, and St. Barth’s (French West Indies).
Her orchestral debut recording for Artek, of the Prokofiev concerti with Gerard Schwarz and the Seattle Symphony, follows two highly-acclaimed Artek discs of music of Ravel and Stravinsky, and of 20th -century works for solo violin. She has also recorded several discs for Naxos, including a Grammy®-nominated recording of Schoenberg’s Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra, and the Stravinsky Violin Concerto with the Philharmonia Orchestra of London, both conducted by the legendary Robert Craft, and forthcoming releases of the Schoenberg Third String Quartet and Stravinsky Duo Concertant.
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Laura Frautschi, violin ~ Violinist Laura Frautschi has established a reputation as a versatile musician with a strong commitment to contemporary as well as classical repertoire. She regularly performs as soloist and chamber musician throughout the United States and Asia, and collaborates frequently with living composers. She has given world premieres of violin concerti by leading American composers Lee Hyla and Augusta Read Thomas, and commissioned trio works by Ryuichi Sakamoto, Kenji Bunch and Patrick Zimmerli. Her recent chamber music activities include appearances at the Caramoor International Festival (first as a Rising Star, and subsequently as a member of the Caramoor Virtuosi), Metropolitan Museum of Art, Wellesley Composer Conference, Moab and St. Bart’s Music Festivals, and yearly tours throughout Japan with cellist Kristina Cooper and pianist John Novacek. In addition, she is a concertmaster of the New York City Opera Orchestra, and she became a member of Orpheus Chamber Orchestra beginning in 2008.
Ms. Frautschi’s extensive discography ranges from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons with the Festival Strings Lucerne and Lee Hyla’s Violin Concerto with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, to twentieth-century chamber works by Bernard Rands, Chen Yi, and Margaret Brouwer. She has a long-standing relationship with the Japanese record label Pony Canyon, for whom she has recorded six CDs of varied short pieces running the gamut from Kreisler and Elgar to Astor Piazzolla and Arvo Part.
Laura Frautschi studied applied mathematics at Harvard College, and violin performance with Robert Mann at The Juilliard School.
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Max Mandel, viola ~ Canadian violist Max Mandel is one of the most acclaimed and active chamber musicians of his generation. Comfortable in many styles and genres, Mr. Mandel's current group affiliations include the FLUX Quartet, The Caramoor Virtuosi, The Silk Road Ensemble, The Metropolitan Museum Artists in Concert, The Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players, The Kirby String Quartet, The Smithsonian Chamber Players, Class Notes, The Knights, Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, and I Furiosi Baroque Ensemble.
Early formative experiences included founding the Metro String Quartet, which helped forge his dedication to chamber music through collaboration with his colleagues and teachers such as Lorand Fenyves at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto and especially the Banff Center for the Arts. Private studies at the University of Toronto and the Juilliard School were with Steven Dann and Samuel Rhodes.
Mr. Mandel is a fan of all kinds of music from Mozart to Feldman to Ghostface and considers himself very fortunate to have collaborated with great artists in many genres from Vera Beths to Ornette Coleman to Kirk Hammett of Metallica. Mr. Mandel plays on a 1973 Giovanni Battista Morassi generously loaned to him by Lesley Robertson of the St. Lawrence Quartet. He resides in Brooklyn, NY.
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