The Center applauds:

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SAMUELI THEATER April 27, 2018

Friday at 8 p.m.

Preview talk byDr. Byron Adams

at 7:15 p.m.

2017 – 18 CHAMBER MUSIC SERIES

Out of courtesy to the artists and your fellow patrons, please take a moment to turn

off and refrain from using cellular phones, pagers, watch alarms and similar devices. The use of any audio or videorecording device or the taking of photographs (with or without

flash) is strictly prohibited. Thank you.

Brentano Quartet Mark Steinberg, violin • Serena Canin, violin

Misha Amory, viola • Nina Lee, cello

with Dawn Upshaw, soprano

Quartet in C major, KV 465 "Dissonance" WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756–1791) Adagio-Allegro Andante cantabile Menuetto (Allegretto) Molto allegro

Il tramonto (The Sunset), for voice & string quartet, OTTORINO RESPIGHIP. 101 (1914) (1879–1936) Allegro moderato Andante Allegro

— I N T E R M I S S I O N —

(Webern) Bagatellen, Op. 9 / (Schubert) Minuets, D89 ANTON WEBERN (1883–1945) Mäßig FRANZ SCHUBERT Minuet I (1797–1828) Leicht bewegt Minuet II Ziemlich fleißend Minuet III Sehr langsam Minuet IV Äußerst langsam Minuet V Fließend Finale: Presto

Quartet No. 2 in F-sharp minor, ARNOLD SCHOENBERGfor string quartet and soprano, Op. 10 (1910) (1874–1951) Allegro Scherzo (Molto Allegro) Theme and variations (Litanei) Finale (Entrueckung)

(text by Stefan George)

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The Brentano String Quartet appears by arrangement with David Rowe Artists | www.davidroweartists.com

Dawn Upshaw has recorded extensively for the Nonesuch label. She is represented by Colbert Artists Management, Inc. | www.colbertartists.com

About the Program

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To enter into the opening of Mozart’s Quartet in C Major, K 465, is to come upon a Beckett landscape, barren and austere, alone with the pulsating background radiation of the cosmos. Lonely voice upon lonely voice happen upon the scene, foreign visitors, and they clash, yearn toward resolution and are thwarted. This is the famous opening which earns the piece the nickname “Dissonance.” Mozart dedicated the set of six quartets from which this hails to Haydn, whose brilliant and groundbreaking Op. 33 quartets Mozart had just studied. Haydn was deeply impressed by the composer 24 years his junior, making his famous declaration to Mozart’s father “Before God, and as an honest man, I tell you that your son is the greatest composer known to me either in person or by name. He has taste, and, what is more, the most profound knowl-edge of composition.” Yet he remained a bit flummoxed by this opening, saying only “If Mozart wrote it he must have meant it.” This from the composer who, later on, would make a musical depiction of Chaos resolved into blinding C Major light in The Creation. Mozart’s upper lines here individually outline a turn, the most innocent ornamen-tal figure of the time, but slowed down so as to be unrecognizable as such, the familiar

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZARTBorn: January 27, 1756, Salzburg, AustriaDied: December 5, 1791, Vienna

Quartet in C major, KV 465 “Dissonance”

stretched in the fun house mirror. Not only is the harmony unstable, but the organization of the pulse as well, time that floats rather than flows. The first violin reaches upward and at the moment of arrival the foundation drops away and the alienated searching begins anew. The upward reaches, unfulfilled all, continue through the introduction. And then, in the face of existential crisis, Mozart chooses to look to the horizon rather than at his own navel. At the appearance of the Allegro main part of the movement the ominous pulsation of the opening levitates, liberated from the ‘cello that tolled forth the prophecy of dark-ness. The melodic line again reaches upward and this time overleaps its landing point in order to sigh down into it, discovering its destiny only when shedding the necessity of climbing directly to it. Henceforth only the memory of shadows dares to shade the pro-ceedings. The Andante begins as a song spun from warmth and contentment. Once the singing has found temporary completion, the first violin and cello begin an exchange of ten-derly questioning glances, privately musing, a wordless expression of wonder. Underlying this is a pulsation reminiscent of those in the first movement, now a marker of time that flows easily, never wanting to be anywhere but where it is. This ushers in a passage where single notes vibrate and pulsate weightlessly, holding time as one instinctively holds breath, to savor the perfection of the present moment, tenderly tremulous, intimate and still. As para-disiacal as this moment is, its comfort proves illusory; toward the end of the movement, the currents that only hinted at flow now crash upon the shore, through painful dissonances and the darkest caverns one might fear to find inside. And yet, as Mozart and only Mozart knows how to do, all this is let go, allowed to drift away into the most magical occurrence of the piece. As the wonder-filled glances return, a new melody appears atop them, a discovery of a completion that had never been under-stood as a lack. Again, as in the first move-ment, Mozart does not wrestle with despair but, noting it, steps aside into a garden previ-ously unnoticed that yet has been awaiting him. John Tarrant writes, in a book about Zen koans, “Since joy might be hiding anywhere, you would be willing to look with curiosity at

sadness or fear, just in case.” Mozart is thus willing, a teacher for all of us. In the Minuet, the repeated note idea returns, this time within the role of the coy, suggestive partner in a flirtatious exchange, a sort of provocative posturing, answered by an assertive, stubborn response. The figures dance around each other, masculine and feminine, the energy of the game paramount. In the con-trasting trio section the repeated notes reap-pear as an undertow, and the back and forth takes on a mock ominous cast, all bluster and swirling storms on stage, one of Prospero’s storms that we know will lead, eventually and inevitably, to a double wedding. By the time we arrive at the Allegro molto last movement the repeated notes have taken on a launching role, ready for vaulting, leaping motion except when they don a serious coun-tenance in good fun to play at interrupting the good cheer of the proceedings. At two points the music gets stuck in a furiously repeating pattern, from which Mozart escapes simply by lifting up above a stalled note as one lifts above cloud cover to see the perennially blue skies. Just as in the opening of the piece, he escapes trouble by levitating above it. Just as the piece readies itself to say goodbye, Mozart reintro-duces the chromatically yearning idea from the introduction, but now it simply teases and is tossed aside. With the recurring character of the repeat-ed note binding the piece together Mozart evinces psychological acumen in his ability to see darkness and tame it. The piece takes and transforms dream images, making them both recognizable and new. It models a sort of lucid dreaming, where a wall becomes a gate because we choose to see it so. In Invisible Love, Emmanuel Schmitt says “Happiness isn’t about hiding from suffering, but about inte-grating it into the fabric of our existence.” We could have no better guide to this integration than Mozart. – Note by Mark Steinberg

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Ottorino Respighi began his early studies at the Liceo Musicale in 1892. He studied composition with Giuseppi Martucci and after graduation in 1899 went first to St. Petersburg to study with Rimsky-Korsakov and later to Berlin to work with Max Bruch. In 1913 he joined the faculty of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome and in 1923 became its director. The remaining years of his life were spent in Rome and many of his works seem permeated by the spirit of the Eternal City as his titles suggest. Respighi was truly Italianate with a strong sense of melody, color and sunlit brilliance. There is also a flair for the dramatic in a strictly Latin sense. Against what was regarded as newer modern music, he was one of the Italian composers who, in 1923 signed a manifesto protesting that it was “an art which does not have any human content and desires to be merely a mechanical demonstration and a cerebral puzzle.” On April 18, 1936, Ottorino Respighi died in his sleep. Stylistically, Respighi’s music is a blend of rich melodies with lush harmonies. He was a master of orchestration, possessing an astounding ability of the evocation of Italian scenes, and the ability to sustain

OTTORINO RESPIGHIBorn: July 9, 1879, Bologna, ItalyDied: April 18, 1936, Rome

Il tramonto (The Sunset), for voice & string quartet, P. 101 (1914)

interest for long periods of time. His music shows a strong inclination toward impressionism while being rooted in the Romantic manner reminiscent of his contemporary, Richard Strauss, his method of impressionism was conspicuously longer-lasting than that of Debussy’s harmonic system. He had a strong interest in works and forms of earlier composers, and became adept in arranging the works of composers including Monteverdi, Tartini, Vitali and Vivaldi. Soon after the première of Semirâma, Respighi’s solo vocal output entered an ambitious phase, in three substantial settings of translations of Shelley. Il tramonto (1914), a part of Queen Mab, combines lyricism and restrained dramatic expression in a hauntingly eloquent single-movement cantata. The accompaniment for strings alone, contains plentiful signs of Respighi’s flair for imaginative textures, fully justifying the work’s place among his most widely performed vocal compositions. This poem was first performed at a concert of the “Friends of Music” at the Milan Conservatory in April 1917. The singer was Mme. Chiarina Fino-Savio, to whom the composition is dedicated. The lyric poem was first written for soprano and string quartet. In this form it was sung in Boston by Eva Gauthier at a concert of the Boston Musical Association, Georges Longy, conductor, on May 23, 1921. In Ottorino Respighi’s concerts in Cincinnati on January 28-29, 1927 and in Cleveland on February 3-4, 1927, his wife Elsa Respighi was accompanied by string orchestra with the addition of double basses. Respighi’s score for Shelley’s singular poem, “Sunset,” is a poetically musical composition which successfully expresses in a pseudo-realistic manner the incidents and tragic suggestion of the story told in verse. It is rather an improvisation on a reading of the poem; the expression of the composer’s thoughts about the story and the conclusion drawn from it. The music itself is a poem, a rhetorical, eloquent transcription of lines that are at the end an example of Shelley philosophizing, not inspired to sing a lofty song. The scant verbal sensibility is confirmed in the short lyrics for voice and

string quartet in Il tramonto, which are among Respighi’s most delicate and suggestive writings. Here, the voice, as such, rather than embedding itself deeply in the words, has an instrumental function. The words give us a vivid description of a sunset on the ocean, the echoing shore, the burnished waves, the lines of purple gold in the sky, the clouds edged with radiancy, that gleam like fertile golden islands on a silver sea. The strings open the work dramatically, then settle down to a calm lyricism. The singer describes the “One within whose subtle being...genius and death contended.” The music surges as the poem tells of his love for the Lady. It then serenely describes the field they walk through, the nature around them, and the colors of the sunset with a repeated, rounded-contour figure. Very quietly, with the strings almost still, the young man wonders “Is it not strange... I never saw the sun? We will walk here Tomorrow; thou shall look on it with me.” A brief interlude follows, and the nature figure returns before the music turns to rigid chords as the Lady finds the young man dead the next morning. The chords soften as the poem describes how she, “died not, nor grew wild, but year by year lived on....” A lighter texture with moving musical lines supports the poem’s description of her life, with the lower strings occasionally deployed in parallel lines to the voice. The Lady’s final appeal for the same peace that the Youth found in death is uttered with a calm disillusionment before a violin solo concludes the piece in the parallel major. – © 2018 Ileen M. Zovluck

Webern pieces of Op. 9 create their form as a vapor spreads its smoky tendrils. They are catalogues of breaths, sighs and gasps; charged, compressed conversations of intimate gestural wisps. The alternation of Schubert and Webern is an oscillation between generations, between public and private expression, between the shapes of the body and the shapes of thoughts. It is also a new composite structure within which gestures slip across the boundaries of time, mirroring each other, reflecting back and forth in unstill waters, betraying their common ancestry in a collective soul. The great violinist Felix Galimir used always to encourage young artists to search for and bring out in perfor-mance the element of dance in the music of the Second Viennese School. Clearly this was a concern for Webern himself, and in these intertwined works we can begin to feel the resonance in our somatic memories permeat-ing it all. – Note by Mark Steinberg

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Arnold Schoenberg’s Second String Quartet, Op. 10, is widely considered to be a visionary work. But whereas it is oft remarked about this work that it sees into and points the way toward the future of musical rhetoric, it is interior seeing which lends it power and mes-merizing depth. Schoenberg, active as a painter as well as a composer, produced a series of haunt-ing paintings which he called “Visions.” These are portraits whose searing eyes gaze intensely at, through, even into the viewer, searching for truth. This spirit is felt as well in the Second Quartet, a piece searching for a new world of self-expression. A hearing of this work convinced Wassily Kandinsky that he and Schoenberg were kindred spirits. Having attended a performance of the quartet, Kandinsky initiated a correspondence and a friendship with the composer. Like Kandinsky, Schoenberg was concerned with the primacy of introspection and emotion in art. Form was to arise out of the inner compulsion for self-expression; if necessary, the boundaries of the art form would shift to accommodate under-standing won through interior questioning. In the case of this piece the gravitational relation-ships inherent in the tonal system, writing in a key, begin to yield to a freer treatment of pitch. Kandinsky writes to Schoenberg:

ARNOLD SCHOENBERGBorn: September 13, 1874, Vienna Died: July 13, 1951, Los Angeles

Quartet No. 2 in F-Sharp Minor

In 1932 Anton Webern conducted and recorded his arrangements of six German dances by Schubert. The recordings are full of vibrant detail and freedom, and of evident love for, and kinship with, the music. Schubert, and perhaps particularly the visceral sweep, swoop and sway of the dance music, occupies a sizable branch of Webern’s genealogical tree. For the Second Viennese School composers (Schubert being part of the so-called First Viennese School), dance, meaning primarily the waltz and thus, reaching backwards, its precursor the minuet, represents the life force, the external, socially viable manifestation of archetypal impulses of the psyche. Webern’s Vienna, home of Sigmund Freud, was leading the way down a new path in understanding of the self. Poised between a veneer of accommo-dation and conventionality, and the nascent flowering of investigation into the emotional mind, with its attendant associations and desires, a space for interior questioning was being pried open. As the Schubert dances, written when the composer was just 16, fit and work their magicwithin a solid, architectural framework, the

ANTON WEBERNBorn: December 13, 1883, ViennaDied: September 15, 1945, Mittersill, Austria

FRANZ SCHUBERTBorn: January 31, 1797, ViennaDied: November 19, 1828, Vienna

(Webern) Bagatellen, Op. 9 / (Schubert) Minuets, D89

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In your works you have realized what I, albeit in uncertain form, have so greatly longed for in music. The inde-pendent progress through their own destinies, the independent life of the individual voices in your compositions, is exactly what I am trying to find in my paintings….I am certain that our own modern harmony is not to be found in the “geometric” way, but rather in the anti-geometric, antilogical way.

Certainly there is much of interest in the artistic links between these two great figures. However, one might argue that in terms of emotional sensibility Schoenberg may be clos-er to painters such as Kokoschka and Schiele, as well as to a writer such as Strindberg, in whose plays Schoenberg had great interest. This work not only occupies a pivotal place in the history of music, but is as well very much a child of its own historical period, pre-war Vienna. This is the Vienna of Freud, of Klimt, of Kokoschka, of Wittgenstein, a simmering cauldron of intellectual and artistic ferment. Dialogue between disciplines was common-place and highly stimulating. One may see here connections to Mahler, a composer with whom Schoenberg had a complicated relationship. Like Mahler’s First Symphony, this quartet features a quotation of a popular folk tune (more on this below), and like Mahler’s Second Symphony it features vocal writing in the third and fourth move-ments. More importantly, the expressive seed from which this quartet germinates finds itself firmly planted in Mahlerian soil. The rich, dark palette and late Romantic sensibility of Mahler inform the overall affect of the piece. Much has been made of the progression of this piece from relative tonal stability to the instability of atonal writing, but in fact there is more ambiguity here than such a view suggests. The first movement starts firmly in f-sharp minor, but somewhat tentatively, quickly collapsing into a single, foreign pitch, catapulting the music into breathless uncer-tainty. (This quick move away from the open-ing material is reminiscent of Brahms’ first string quartet.) The second theme we encoun-ter evokes the world of the Viennese waltz, but fraught with anxiety, an early suggestion of the hallucinatory waltzes to be found in the String Trio, Op. 45, much later in the composer’s life.

Herein can be felt the central issue of the piece, familiar steps in an unfamiliar landscape. The movement ends temporarily at rest, but with a feeling of defeat. The second movement, a scherzo, opens disembodied, drum-like on a single low cello pitch, perhaps an echo of the parallel move-ment in Beethoven’s Quartet Op. 59 No. 1. As various spectral themes are brought in the movement takes on a macabre cast. One of the two most famous moments in the piece comes when the second violin begins the popular tune “Ach, du lieber Augustin, alles ist hin,” music that would ordinarily be accompanied by the simplest of harmonies. However here it finds itself out of place, torn from its natural milieu. Schoenberg remarked to a student of his that the “alles ist hin” (all is lost) was “not ironical [but has] a true emo-tional significance.” As the tune fades away fragmented wisps of the waltz theme from the first movement are heard, disoriented. After a wild unison passage for all four instruments a quickened version of the drum motive from the start of the movement flashes by as the music seems almost to vaporize. The Litany that follows is a setting of a Stefan George poem, one where the speaker pleads for solace, for release from worldly pas-sions in order to find peace. Significantly, all the musical material is drawn from the earlier movements; for example, the lonely viola line which starts the movement is a distended ver-sion of the opening theme of the piece, accom-panied by a prolonged sigh in the first violin drawn from the waltz theme from that move-ment. Thus there is a sense of looking back-wards, reflecting on one’s past while searching for a way forward. The music unfolds as a continuous set of variations, embodying the feeling of wrestling with ideas. This is music of heart-wrenching drama, featuring one of the largest vocal leaps in the literature, a plummet-ing from the highest register to the soprano’s lowest (“take from me love,” after which the singer continues “and give me thy peace”). The brief answering coda for the quartet alone grows to a shattering cry which is choked off at its peak. As if in shock from this suffocated out-burst the final movement takes this passionate human cry and answers it with music which is cold and spare. There is no sense of anchor,

of tonal underpinnings, and this introductory texture leads to the entrance of the soprano in what is one of the most famous lines in musi-cal history: “I feel the air of another planet.” Here is embodied a vision of a whole new space, having wandered far from the Viennese waltzes, the societal references of the first part of the piece. It is a world of subjectivity, of sensitivity to the sometimes alienated feelings of the individual. The poem, however, ends “Carried aloft beyond the highest cloud, / I am afloat upon a sea of crystal splendor, / I am only a sparkle of the holy fire, / I am only a roaring of the holy voice.” Schoenberg saw this piece as the gateway to the next stage of his development as a composer. The initial per-formance of the quartet created a scandal, the cries of the public eventually completely oblit-erating the music. But the piece itself ends in an earned state of tranquility, a turn to F-sharp major, having traveled far from the ending of the first movement. Despite the fear of the new acted out by the Viennese public, we can see now that there is much beauty here, much imagination and color, and much profundity. – Note by Mark Steinberg

Texts and Translations

Già v’ebbe un uomo, nel cui tenue spirto(qual luce e vento in delicata nubeche ardente ciel di mezzo-giorno stempri)la morte e il genio contendeano. Oh! quanta tenera gioia,che gli fè il respiro venir meno(così dell’aura estiva l’ansia talvolta)quando la sua dama, che allor solo conobbe l’abbandonopieno e il concorde palpitar di due creature che s’amano,egli addusse pei sentieri d’un campo,ad oriente da una foresta biancheggiante ombratoed a ponente discoverto al cielo!Ora è sommerso il sole; ma linee d’oropendon sovra le cineree nubi,sul verde piano sui tremanti fiorisui grigi globi dell’ antico smirnio,e i neri boschi avvolgono,del vespro mescolandosi alle ombre. Lenta sorge ad orientel’infocata luna tra i folti ramidelle piante cupe:brillan sul capo languide le stelle.E il giovine sussura: "Non è strano?Io mai non vidi il sorgere del sole,o Isabella. Domani a contemplarlo verremo insieme."

Il giovin e la dama giacquer tra il sonno e il dolce amorcongiunti ne la notte: al mattingelido e morto ella trovò l’amante.Oh! nessun creda che, vibrando tal colpo,fu il Signore misericorde.Non morì la dama, né folle diventò:anno per anno visse ancora.Ma io penso che la queta sua pazienza, e i trepidi sorrisi,e il non morir… ma vivere a custodia del vecchio padre(se è follia dal mondo dissimigliare)fossero follia. Era, null’altro che a vederla,come leggere un canto da ingegnoso bardointessuto a piegar gelidi cuori in un dolor pensoso.Neri gli occhi ma non fulgidi più;consunte quasi le ciglia dalle lagrime;le labbra e le gote parevan cose morte tanto eran bianche;ed esili le mani e per le erranti vene e le giunture rossadel giorno trasparia la luce.La nuda tomba, che il tuo fral racchiude,cui notte e giorno un’ombra tormentata abita,è quanto di te resta, o cara creatura perduta!

"Ho tal retaggio, che la terra non dà:calma e silenzio, senza peccato e senza passione.Sia che i morti ritrovino (non mai il sonno!) ma il riposo,imperturbati quali appaion,o vivano, o d’amore nel mar profondo scendano;oh! che il mio epitaffio, che il tuo sia: Pace!"Questo dalle sue labbra l’unico lamento.

There late was One within whose subtle being,As light and wind within some delicate cloudThat fades amid the blue noon’s burning sky,Genius and death contended. None may knowThe sweetness of the joy which made his breathFail, like the trances of the summer air,When, with the lady of his love, who thenFirst knew the unreserved of mingled being,He walked along the pathway of a fieldWhich to the east a hoar wood shadowed o’er,But to the west was open to the sky.There now the sun had sunk, but lines of goldHung on the ashen clouds, and on the pointsOf the far level grass and nodding flowersAnd the old dandelion’s hoary beard,And, mingled with the shades of twilight, layOn the brown massy woods—and in the eastThe broad and burning moon lingeringly roseBetween the black trunks of the crowded trees,While the faint stars were gathering overhead."Is it not strange, Isabel," said the youth,"I never saw the sun? We will walk hereTo-morrow; thou shalt look on it with me."

That night the youth and lady mingled layIn love and sleep—but when the morning cameThe lady found her lover dead and cold.Let none believe that God in mercy gaveThat stroke. The lady died not, nor grew wild,But year by year lived on—in truth I thinkHer gentleness and patience and sad smiles,And that she did not die, but lived to tendHer aged father, were a kind of madness,If madness ’tis to be unlike the world.For but to see her were to read the taleWoven by some subtlest bard, to make hard heartsDissolve away in wisdom-working grief;Her eyes were black and lusterless and wan:Her eyelashes were worn away with tears,Her lips and cheeks were like things dead—so pale;Her hands were thin, and through their wandering veinsAnd weak articulations might be seenDay’s ruddy light. The tomb of thy dead selfWhich one vexed ghost inhabits, night and day,Is all, lost child, that now remains of thee!

"Inheritor of more than earth can give,Passionless calm and silence unproved,Where the dead find, oh, not sleep! but rest,And are the uncomplaining things they seem,Or live, a drop in the deep sea of Love;Oh, that like thine, mine epitaph were—Peace!"This was the only moan she ever made.

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Il Tramonto, by Ottorino Respighi Italian: Il Tramonto by Roberto Ascoli translation Shelley; English: The Sunset by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)

LitaneiTief ist die trauer die mich umdüstert,Ein tret ich wieder, Herr! in dein haus.Lang war die reise, matt sind die glieder,Leer sind die schreine, voll nur die qual.Durstende zunge darbt nach dem weine.Hart war gestritten, starr ist mein arm.Gönne die ruhe schwankenden schritten,Hungrigem gaume bröckle dein brot!Schwach ist mein atem rufend dem traume,Hohl sind die hände, fiebernd der mund.Leih deine kühle, lösche die brände.Tilge das hoffen, sende das licht!Gluten im herzen lodern noch offen,Innerst im grunde wacht noch ein schrei.Töte das sehnen, schliesse die wunde!Nimm mir die liebe, gib mir dein glück!

EntrückungIch fühle luft von anderem planeten.Mir blassen durch das dunkel die gesichterDie freundlich eben noch sich zu mir drehten.Und bäum und wege die ich liebte fahlenDass ich sie kaum mehr kenne und du lichterGeliebter schatten—rufer meiner qualen—Bist nun erloschen ganz in tiefern glutenUm nach dem taumel streitenden getobesMit einem frommen schauer anzumuten.Ich löse mich in tönen, kreisend, webend,Ungründigen danks und unbenamten lobesDem grossen atem wunschlos mich ergebend.Mich überfährt ein ungestümes wehenIm rausch der weihe wo inbrünstige schreieIn staub geworfner beterinnen flehen:Dann seh ich wie sich duftige nebel lüpfenIn einer sonnerfüllten klaren freieDie nur umfängt auf fernsten bergesschlüpfen.Der boden schüffert weiss und weich wie molke.Ich steige über schluchten ungeheuer.Ich fühle wie ich über letzter wolkeIn einem meer kristallnen glanzes schwimme—Ich bin ein funke nur vom heiligen feuerIch bin ein dröhnen nur der heiligen stimme.

LitanyDeep is the sadness that gloomily comes over me,Again I step, Lord, in your house.Long was the journey, my limbs are weary,The shrines are empty, only anguish is full.My thirsty tongue desires wine.The battle was hard, my arm is stiff.Grudge peace to my staggering steps,for my hungry gums break your bread!Weak is my breath, calling the dream,my hands are hollow, my mouth fevers.Lend your coolness, douse the fires,rub out hope, send the light!Fires in my heart still glow, open,inside my heart a cry wakes.Kill the longing, close the wound!Take my love away, give me your joy!

RaptureI feel air from another planet.I faintly through the darkness see facesFriendly even now, turning toward me.And trees and paths that I loved fadeSo I can scarcely know them and you brightBeloved shadow—summoner of my anguish—Are only extinguished completely in a deep glowingIn the frenzy of the fightWith a pious show of reason.I lose myself in tones, circling, weaving,With unfathomable thanks and unnamed praise,Bereft of desire, I surrender myself to the great breath.A violent wind passes over meIn the thrill of consecration where ardent criesIn dust flung by women on the ground:Then I see a filmy mist risingIn a sun-filled, open expanseThat includes only the farthest mountain hatches.The land looks white and smooth like whey,I climb over enormous canyons.I feel as if above the last cloudSwimming in a sea of crystal radiance—I am only a spark of the holy fireI am only a whisper of the holy voice.

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String Quartet No. 2, by Arnold Schoenberg The latter two movements are set to poems from Stefan George's collection Der siebente Ring (The Seventh Ring), published in 1907.

About the Artists

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The Brentano String QuartetMark Steinberg, violinSerena Canin, violinMisha Amory, violaNina Lee, cello

Since its inception in 1992, the Brentano String Quartet has appeared throughout the world to popular and critical acclaim. “Passionate, uninhibited and spellbinding,” raves the London Independent; The New York Times extols its “luxuriously warm sound [and] yearning lyricism.” Since 2014, the Brentano Quartet has served as artists in residence at Yale University. The Quartet also currently serves as the collaborative ensemble for the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. Formerly, they were artists in residence at Princeton University for many years. The Quartet has performed in the world’s

most prestigious venues, including Carnegie Hall and Alice Tully Hall in New York; the Library of Congress in Washington; the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam; the Konzerthaus in Vienna; Suntory Hall in Tokyo; and the Sydney Opera House. The Quartet had its first European tour in 1997, and was hon-ored in the U.K. with the Royal Philharmonic Award for Most Outstanding Debut. In addition to their interest in perform-ing very old music, the Brentano Quartet frequently collaborates with contemporary composers. Recent commissions include a piano quintet by Vijay Iyer, a work by Eric Moe (with Christine Brandes, soprano), and a viola quintet by Felipe Lara (performed with violist Hsin-Yun Huang). In 2012, the Quartet provided the central music (Beethoven Opus 131) for the critically acclaimed independent film A Late Quartet. The quartet has worked closely with other

important composers of our time, among them Elliot Carter, Charles Wuorinen, Chou Wen-chung, Bruce Adolphe, and György Kurtág. The Quartet has also been privileged to collaborate with such artists as soprano Jessye Norman and pianists Richard Goode, Jonathan Biss, and Mitsuko Uchida. The Quartet is named for Antonie Brentano, whom many scholars consider to be Beethoven’s “Immortal Beloved,” the intended recipient of his famous love confession.

www.brentanoquartet.com

Dawn Upshaw

Joining a rare natural warmth with a fierce commitment to the transforming com-municative power of music, Dawn Upshaw has achieved worldwide celebrity as a singer of opera and concert repertoire ranging from the sacred works of Bach to the fresh-est sounds of today. Her ability to reach to the heart of music and text has earned her both the devotion of an exceptionally diverse audience, and the awards and distinctions accorded to only the most distinguished of artists. In 2007, she was named a Fellow of the MacArthur Foundation, the first vocal artist to be awarded the five-year “genius” prize, and in 2008 she was named a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.Her acclaimed performances on the opera stage comprise the great Mozart roles (Susanna, Ilia, Pamina, Despina and Zerlina) as well as modern works by Stravinsky, Poulenc, and Messiaen. From Salzburg, Paris and Glyndebourne to the Metropolitan Opera, where she began her career in 1984 and has since made nearly 300 appearances, Upshaw has also championed numerous new works created for her including The Great Gatsby by John Harbison; the Grawemeyer Award-winning opera, L’Amour de Loin and oratorio La Passion de Simone by Kaija Saariaho; John Adams’s Nativity oratorio El Niño; and Osvaldo Golijov’s chamber opera Ainadamar and song cycle Ayre. It says much about Upshaw’s sensibili-ties as an artist and colleague that she is a favored partner of many leading musicians, including Gilbert Kalish, the Kronos Quartet, James Levine, and Esa-Pekka Salonen. In her work as a recitalist, and particularly in her work with composers, Upshaw has become a generative force in concert music, having premiered more than 25 works in the past decade. From Carnegie Hall to large and small venues throughout the world she regu-larly presents specially designed programs composed of lieder, contemporary works in many languages, and folk and popular music. She furthers this work in master classes and workshops with young singers at major music festivals, conservatories, and liberal arts colleges. She is artistic director of the vocal arts program at the Bard College

Conservatory of Music, and the head of the vocal arts program at the Tanglewood Music Center. A five-time Grammy Award winner, Upshaw most recently received the 2014 Best Classical Vocal Solo Grammy for Maria Schneider’s Winter Morning Walks on the ArtistShare Label. She is featured on more than 50 recordings, including the million-selling Symphony No. 3 by Henryk Gorecki for Nonesuch Records. Her discography also includes full-length opera recordings of Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro; Messiaen’s St. Francois d’Assise; Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress; John Adams’ El Niño; two volumes of Canteloube’s Songs of the Auvergne, a dozen recital recordings, and an acclaimed

three-disc series of Osvaldo Golijov’s music for Deutsche Grammophon. Upshaw holds honorary doctorate degrees from Yale, the Manhattan School of Music, The Juilliard School, Allegheny College, and Illinois Wesleyan University. She began her career as a 1984 winner of the Young Concert Artists Auditions and the 1985 Walter W. Naumburg Competition, and was a member of the Metropolitan Opera Young Artists Development Program. Upshaw has recorded extensively for the Nonesuch label. She can also be heard on Angel/EMI, BMG, Deutsche Grammophon, London, Sony Classical, Telarc, and on Erato and Teldec in the Warner Classics Family of labels.

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