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SCHULHOFF Divertimento for String Quartet, Op. 14 Lebhaft Cavatine Intermezzo Romanze Rondo

STRAVINSKY Three Pieces for String Quartet 1. Dance 2. Eccentric 3. Canticle

I N T E R M I S S I O N

ELGAR Piano Quintet in A Minor, Op. 84 Moderato; Allegro Adagio Andante; Allegro

Ariel String Quartetwith Alon Goldstein, piano

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Additional support is also provided by:

Music Alliance: A co-presentation of The Friends of Chamber Music and UMKC Conservatory of Music and Dance

This concert is underwritten, in part, by the 2014 Cleveland Quartet Award

The International Chamber Music Series is underwritten, in part, by the William T. Kemper Foundation

Gershon Gershikov violinAlexandra Kazovsky violinJan Grüning violaAmit Even-Tov celloAlon Goldstein piano

The Folly Theater8 pm Friday, January 30

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This evening’s program comprises works by composers of Czech, Russian, and English origin. Thus one would expect differences of style. The diversity among these particular pieces, however, is startling, especially considering that all three were written within a five year span. The two string quartet works on the first half are exactly contemporary, both dating from 1914. That year has its own significance, of course. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in late June 1914 is credited by some historians as having triggered a series of events that led to the outbreak of World War I at the end of July. Four years later, in the final months of that devastating conflict, Sir Edward Elgar began his Piano Quintet. When he finished the piece in early 1919, the world was dealing not only with the consequences of the Great War, but also with the aftermath of a horrific influenza epidemic that killed some 50 million people globally. In addition to that politically fraught context for their music, each of the composers was in a different place in his career when these pieces were written. The Schulhoff Divertimento is a student work, composed while he was at the Cologne Conservatory. Rebelling against what he regarded as the oppression of his composition teachers, Schulhoff seems intent on mocking tradition in this five-movement suite. Stravinsky was a dozen years older than Schulhoff and, by 1914, vastly more experienced. He had already enjoyed the triumphs of the ballets Firebird and Petrouchka and survived the scandal of The Rite of Spring. Unafraid to take chances or, in today’s vernacular, to ‘push the envelope,’ he continued to stretch his players and his audience. The Three Pieces for String Quartet prickle with in-your-face dissonance, expressionist angst, and a firm break from anything remotely associated with post-romanticism. Although Elgar’s Piano Quintet is the latest work on this program, it sounds as if it predates the other two by decades. Born in 1857, he was the oldest of our three composers, and firmly entrenched in the very romanticism from which Stravinsky and Schulhoff wished to dissociate themselves. By 1918, Elgar was an old man. His mature works are wistful and valedictory, commemorating a world that was gone forever. In harmonic language, structure, and cyclic techniques, the Quintet seems an effort to recapture a vanished value system. Elgar looks back over his shoulder by at least a quarter century.

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Erwin Schulhoff

Music Alliance Event: Sounds from an Unsettled World, 1914-19Wednesday, January 28 at 6:30 p.m.Cash bar and small plates available at J.C. Nichols Auditorium Lobby from 5:30 -6:30 p.m. Seating is limited and available on a first come, first-serve basis. National World War I Museum at Liberty Memorial Composers respond in different ways to their world. The events leading up to World War I and the conflict itself greatly affected how composers thought of their art and also how audiences responded to new works. Using the music on the Ariel String Quartet’s program with Alon Goldstein as inspiration, the panelists will investigate the relationships between music and world events between 1914 and 1919.Panel Members: Dr. William Everett and Dr. Andrew Granade, UMKC Conservatory of Music and Dance; Dr. Lynda Payne, UMKC Dept. of History; Matthew Naylor, President and CEO of the National World War I Museum This event is general admission and free to the public, but tickets are required. Please reserve online chambermusic.org or call 816-561-9999. Co-presented by The Friends of Chamber Music, UMKC Conservatory of Music and Dance, and the National World War I Museum.

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Divertimento for String Quartet, Op. 14 Erwin Schulhoff (1894-1942) Czech-born Erwin Schulhoff was a protégé of Dvořák and a student of Max Reger and Fritz Steinbach. Despite the fact that his name and music are new to most of us this evening, in his day he was a musician of remarkable versatility and stature. As a student in Leipzig and Cologne, he earned prizes in both piano and composition, and went on to a successful career as a jazz performer! Between 1918 and 1938, his music was widely performed in Europe. Although the early work that opens this concert is hardly revolutionary, Schulhoff later allied himself with a number of avant-garde movements, including Dadaism and quarter-tone music. He was one of the first to address the challenges of music “between” the pitches of the piano, as developed by his contemporary Aloïs Hába. Schulhoff did not limit his radical causes to music. He became a Communist and a naturalized Soviet citi-zen. When the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, Schulhoff ’s Jewish heritage and Communist affiliation were more than enough to mandate his incarceration. He died in the German concentration camp at Wülzburg, Bavaria. The Divertimento was written in 1914, when Shulhoff was not yet twenty, while completing his studies at the Cologne Conservatory. In a letter to the music scholar Alfred Einstein dated April 26, 1922, Schulhoff described his student days. With regard to composition, I am self-taught since there always occurred differences of opinion between my teachers and me which usually led to my “being chucked out.” . . . None of my teachers influenced the direction I was taking. Rather, the oppression of my teachers gave my work more shape. In my compositions I ridicule all my teachers.

The five movements of Opus 14 have an undercurrent of satirical humor that bears out Schulhoff’s comments. The term Divertimento implies a lighter character: entertainment music often rooted in dance rhythms.

The forms of the individual movements are simple and straightforward. His three inner movements are ternary structures with a literal repeat of the A section following a central, contrasting B section. Dance types dominate the Divertimento. He opens with a march marked Lebhaft (lively) that functions as a fanfare introduction. Rhythmic energy and a free approach to tonality set the tone for the work. Schulhoff’s writing is playful, with engaging use of pizzicato. The Cavatine movement is a gentle waltz for muted upper strings accompanied by pizzicatos in the cello part. Schulhoff’s directive is Ruhig fließend (calmly flowing). This interpretive guideline applies equally well to the middle section, with its undulating sixths in the second violin and viola. The viola takes the spotlight in the Intermezzo movement, supported by the other three strings playing pizzicato. The B section switches from a brisk 3/8 meter to a more relaxed waltz tempo. Schulhoff plays games with his phrases, asking hesitant, tentative questions that he never fully answers. Another viola solo introduces the Romanze movement; the melody soon passes to the first violin. The violin dominates the brief middle section, which concludes with a passage marked A la Cadenza. At nearly seven minutes, the concluding Rondo is the Divertimento’s longest movement. After three movements in a triple or compound meter, Schulhoff returns to 4/4 time and a strong rhythmic profile. His theme has Haydnesque wit and energy, making virtuosic demands on all four players. Sudden changes of dynamics and articulation and the occasional unexpected full stop are yet other examples of techniques used by Haydn. This is the sole movement in which Schulhoff engages in a bit of imitative writing as opposed to his style in the Divertimento movement which is written in homophonic rather than polyphonic style. Throughout the Divertimento, Schulhoff seems to thumb his nose at conventional rules of harmony. Though he writes without key signatures, his music is distinctly tonal, yet he takes frequent left turns into unexpected key centers. Imaginative accompaniment figures and strong melodic ideas give the Divertimento both substance and charm.

Master ClassesAlon Goldstein, piano Thursday, January 29 10 AM – 12 PM White Recital Hall

Ariel String Quartet Saturday, January 31 10 AM – 12 PM White Recital Hall

All of our Master Classes are FREE and open to the public. Please join us!

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Igor Stravinsky (Library of Congress)

Three Pieces for String QuartetIgor Stravinsky (1882-1971) After the three great ballets L’oiseau de feu (“The Firebird,” 1910), Petrouchka (1911), and Le sacre du printemps (“The Rite of Spring,” 1913), Stravinsky was moving away from the large orchestras he had employed for those masterworks. Instead, he concentrated more on exploring the specific tone colors available to him within smaller chamber ensembles. His Three Pieces for String Quartet, composed in 1914, are an example. The title itself is a clue to the work. By not calling it a string quartet, Stravinsky was distancing himself from the string quartet tradition. Specifically, he avoided the notion of the sonata form, with all its implications of tonal and structural organization, as well as the expectations of specific movements that had been used since Haydn. All three pieces experiment with unusual meth-ods of producing sounds on the string instruments. The first piece has frequent changes of meter and misplaced accents. Repetition of melodic fragments and motivic patterns overlap to give it variety. In the second, Stravinsky explores changing tempos, with specific episodes of rapidly changing moods. The third piece differs from the first two, and is calmer with more chorale-like writing.

These brief pieces leave one feeling the absence of dialogue. Each instrument follows its own path, beginning and ending at the same place via four independent routes. Stravinsky liked these pieces. He later transcribed them for large orchestra, incorporating a fourth movement in the Spanish style. In that version, Quatre Etudes pour Orchestre (revised in 1928), the work has been performed more frequently, but it is still a comparative rarity in concert. The movements are untitled in the string quartet score, bearing only metronome markings. In the orchestral version, Stravinsky gave titles to the movements. He called the first one ‘Dance.’ Its melody, restricted to four pitches spanning a fourth, is related to Russian folk music. The second piece, called ‘Eccentric’ in the orchestration, was inspired by the English music hall comedian and dancer called Little Tich (né Harry Relph), whom Stravinsky saw perform in the summer of 1914. ‘Eccentric’ is his musical evocation of Little Tich’s clownish movements. Stravinsky thought highly of the third piece, (later called ‘Canticle’) and reused its opening triplet motive in his Symphonies of Wind Instruments (1920). Listeners will identify fragments of the Dies irae chant. Stravinsky revised the original Three Pieces in 1918. They were published in 1922 by Edition Russe de Musique with a dedication to the Swiss conductor Ernest Ansermet.

Piano Quintet in A Minor, Op. 84Edward Elgar (1857-1934) In the waning months of the Great War, as Armistice looked increasingly likely, Edward and Alice Elgar leased a cottage called Brinkwells, situated in Sussex between the tiny village of Fittleworth and Wisborough Green. The oak-beamed, thatch-roofed cottage was situated on a hill. A studio across the property had a splendid view of wooded countryside, the Arun River, and the South Downs hills toward the coast. On a nearby plateau, a grove of gnarled trees was visible. They had been struck by lightning, denuding the branches and, of course, killing the trees. At dusk and after nightfall, their bizarre silhouettes against the night sky resembled eerie, deformed figures. Local legend held that, centuries before, an order of Spanish monks had been engaged in ‘impious rites’ - presumably some blasphemy unacceptable to the Catholic liturgy-and were struck dead; the trees were said to be their earthly remains.

the friends of chamber music | Live Performance. Be There.

Photograph of Sir Edward Elgar by Edgar Thomas Holding, c.1905(Nathional Portrait Gallery)

Elgar was enchanted with Brinkwells and its surroundings and found himself full of new musical ideas. During the summer, he embarked on a series of three works that were to be his most substantial efforts in the realm of chamber music. The first to be completed was a violin sonata. The day he finished the sonata, September 15, 1918, he began composing the Piano Quintet. A string quartet followed in 1919. The three were published, respectively, as his Opp. 82, 83, and 84.

The dead trees on the plateau found their way into the Quintet in the second theme of the first movement. He wrote the work for Ernest Newman, a prominent English writer on music. In a letter dated January 5, 1919, Elgar reported to his friend:

Your Quintet remains to be completed–the first movement is ready & I want you to hear it–it is strange music I think & I like it–but–it’s ghostly stuff.

He composed the Adagio that month and completed the work by March. A private performance took place at Severn House, the Elgars’ London residence, on March 7, introducing the Violin Sonata, the Quartet, and the

Quintet to a group of friends. George Bernard Shaw was among the guests, and wrote to Elgar the next day, dwelling on his impressions of the Quintet.

The English biographer Ian Parrott has observed, “The main paradox of Elgar’s three mature chamber music works is that in one sense the composer has too few instruments yet in another he has too many.” The Quintet, which is regarded as the best of the three, has a symphonic grandeur in some places and an aching, solitary soulfulness in others. The outer movements often struggle to break free of chamber music, surging toward symphonic grandeur.

Elgar’s piano writing is marvelously effective, particularly in the surges towards climaxes. The textures have a Brahmsian thickness, and he frequently matches Brahms’s breadth, drama, and nobility as well. Harmonically, the language is more conservative than Elgar’s music of the previous decade. He employs a Wagnerian chromaticism that lends the music a post-romantic appeal. Structurally, the Quintet suggests César Franck, with its use of cyclic quotations or allusions; themes introduced in the opening movement recur in the second and third movements.

Elgar has been criticized for some passages that evoke salon music in both of the outer movements. The Adagio, however, is unimpeachable and the Quintet’s greatest glory. Opening with a creamy viola solo, the slow movement is now wistful, now melancholy, now tender. Elgar ascends to the sublime, achieving the same qualities as the beloved ‘Nimrod’ Variation from the Enigma and the lesser-known, but eloquent slow movement to his First Symphony.

Program Notes by Laurie Shulman ©2014

Found a word or phrase that you are unfamiliar with? Check out our extensive Glossary beginning on page 118 to discover the meaning.

Cleveland Quartet AwardThe Ariel String Quartet is the recipient of Chamber Music America’s 2014 Cleveland Quartet Award. The quartet’s performance has been made possible by the Cleveland Quartet Award Endowment Fund.

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Characterized by its youth, brilliant playing, and soulful interpretations, the Ariel Quartet has quickly earned a glowing

international reputation. In January 2012 the Quartet was named quartet-in-residence at the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music, a remarkable accomplishment for such a young ensemble and a testament to the Ariel’s skill and dedication to their craft. And in October 2013, the Quartet was selected to receive the Cleveland Quartet Award. Established in 1995, the biennial award honors and promotes an emerging young string quartet whose exceptional artistry demonstrates the potential for a major career. Formed in Israel, the Quartet moved to the United States in 2004 to continue its professional studies as the resident ensemble at the New England Conservatory’s prestigious Professional String Quartet Training Program. Since their graduation in 2010, the Ariel has won a number of international prizes, including the Grand Prize at the 2006 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition and third prize at the Banff International String Quartet Competition in 2007. At that same Banff competition, the quartet was also awarded the Székely Prize for their performance of Bartók. The American Record Guide described the Ariel Quartet’s performance at the 2007 Banff Competition as “a consummate ensemble gifted with utter musicality and remarkable interpretive power” and called their performance of Beethoven’s Op. 132 “the pinnacle of the competition.” In addition to performing the traditional quartet repertoire, the Ariel Quartet regularly collaborates with many musicians and composers, including such artists as pianists Menahem Pressler and Roman Rabinovich; the American and Jerusalem String Quartets; violist Roger Tapping, and cellist Paul Katz. The Ariel also served as quartet-in-residence in the Steans Music Institute at the Ravinia Festival for two consecutive years. Taught by Paul Katz, Donald Weilerstein, Miriam Fried, Kim Kashkashian, and Martha Strongin Katz, among others, the Quartet has received extensive scholarship support for the members’ studies in the United States from the America-Israel Cultural Foundation, Dov and Rachel Gottesman, and the Legacy Heritage Fund. Most recently, they were awarded a substantial grant from The A. N. and Pearl G. Barnett Family Foundation.

For more information, please visit www.arielquartet.com

The Ariel Quartet appears courtesy of Melvin Kaplan, Inc.

Ariel String Quartetalon Goldstein is one of the most original and sensitive pianists

of his generation, admired for his musical intelligence, dynamic personality, artistic vision and innovative programming. He has played with the Israel, London, Radio France, and Los Angeles Philharmonic orchestras as well as the Philadelphia, San Francisco, Baltimore, St. Louis, Dallas, Houston, and Vancouver symphonies under such conductors as Zubin Mehta, Herbert Blomstedt, Vladimir Jurowski, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Leon Fleisher, Peter Oundjian, Yoel Levi and others. In the fall of 2013, Mr. Goldstein released q recording of Mendelssohn Concertos Nos. 1 and 2 with the Israel Chamber Orchestra conducted by Yoav Talmi. This collaboration scored a major success on a 17-concert Latin American tour that included concerts in Teatro Colon, Palacio des Bellas Artes and Teatro Nacional. A return tour is planned for the 2015-16 season. Performance highlights of the last season include appearances at the Ravinia Festival as soloist with the Chicago Symphony under James Conlon in the Mozart Double and Triple concertos with Leon Fleisher and Katherine Jacobson Fleisher. In addition, Mr. Goldstein was heard nation-wide in performances with the Goldstein-Peled-Fiterstein Trio (piano, clarinet, cello) and solo recitals, many of which included the music of Debussy in homage of the composer’s 150th birthday Other recent highlights include two world premieres of concerti that were written for Mr. Goldstein - Lost Souls by Avner Dorman with the Kansas City Symphony under Michael Stern, and Ornaments by Mark Kopytman with the Jerusalem Camerata, as well as performances at Carnegie Hall with the New York String Orchestra under Jaime Laredo, and solo recitals in Beijing (in the Forbidden City), Moscow (Kremlin), New York (Town Hall), Chicago, Guatemala City, Kent (UK), Jerusalem, and Tel Aviv. Alon has performed at the Gilmore, Santa Fe, Tanglewood, Ravinia, Marlboro, Seattle, Verbier, Prussia Cove and Jerusalem music festivals. Over the past several years he has also taught and played at the Steans Institute of the Ravinia Festival, New York’s International Keyboard Festival and given master classes at “Tel Hai” in Israel.

For more information visit: www.alongoldstein.com Alon Goldstein appears courtesy of Frank Salomon Associates

Alon Goldstein