CURRENT SEASON
2023-24 PROGRAMS
SUNRISE
Clara Wieck Schumann (1819-1896): Ich stand in dunkeln träumen, arr. Karen Ouzounian
Béla Bartók (1881-1945): String Quartet No. 4, Sz. 91
Tanya Tagaq (b. 1975): Sivunittinni, arr. Jacob Garchik (2015)*
Joseph Haydn (1732-1809): String Quartet in B-flat Major, Op. 76 No. 4, “Sunrise” (1797)
*This work is a part of the Kronos Quartet’s 50 for the Future project
From the moment darkness envelops the sky to the first shades of pink at dawn, night is fascinating and mysterious. For some of us, the mind and body wind down, giving way to delicious rest and sleep. For others, the mind activates and creativity blooms. We contemplate and question in different ways than during the day, with a different perspective. No wonder night has served as inspiration for many artists, writers, poets, composers, and thinkers!
Clara Wieck Schumann had already established an impressive career as a touring pianist and composer by the time she married Robert Schumann in 1840. Buoyed by Robert’s encouragement to “Write a song!”, Clara gifted him three songs for their first Christmas together. Ich stand in dunkeln träumen (I stand darkly dreaming), which eventually became part of Sechs Lieder, Op. 13, was a setting of a Heinrich Heine poem. The two and a half minutes of this song, arranged for the quartet by Karen Ouzounian, are filled with tenderness and yearning. It was written after a period of separation for the newlywed couple, during which they may have shared the intimate act of looking at each other’s portraits with longing, like in the opening lines of this song. The pulsing texture in the accompaniment provides a sense of constancy, even as chromaticism betrays anxious thoughts and emotions. Like the Schumanns, our desire to seek connection–to other people, to our world, inwards to our minds and dreams–can be heightened at night, whether we are with others or find ourselves alone.
We love Béla Bartók’s Fourth Quartet for its vitality and abandon. He skillfully uses effects such as mutes, slides, and pizzicato to create new sounds and textures out of this combination of instruments. Throughout, we are players on high alert to navigate the intricate interactions between our four parts, which at times mirror each other, face off in pairs, and come together before immediately splitting off in separate directions. Bartók drew inspiration from the folk music he collected and studied, from years of field work in his native Hungary and beyond (Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Serbia, northern Africa). He internalized the tunes, rhythms, textures, and emotions, infusing his own musical voice with elements of the folk music he heard. The five movements of this quartet are structured like an arc: the first and last movements are a pair, the second and fourth movements share scherzo-like features, and Bartók called the third movement the “kernel” of the work.
Ideas of great adventure are often born at night, and the first movement launches like the beginning of a bold quest. Bartók plays with mirror images in the main motive of the first movement (three rising notes followed by three quickly falling notes), which appears once again near the end of the last movement. The Finale caps off the journey with spirited and visceral rhythms. The second movement goes by in a flash, like watching a faded and sped-up time lapse of a village dance as bodies twirl and leap and feet stomp, before everyone goes home and the square empties. The equally brief fourth movement, entirely pizzicato, is a dance on unpredictable ground that requires nimble feet. At times charming, cheeky, and off-kilter, it is the first time Bartók uses the technique of snap pizzicato which became known as the “Bartók pizzicato.” The central third movement features Bartók’s night music, used primarily in his slow movements. The cello introduces a soul deep in contemplation, enveloped by the sounds of the shimmering night. Nocturnal creatures from all corners awaken and fill the air with sounds of activity. It is as if we find ourselves in a darkened space, and we become more keenly aware of our surroundings as other senses come alive.
Composers today continue to stretch the string quartet’s sound palette in expressive and powerful ways. For Tanya Tagaq, an Inuk singer, songwriter, novelist, and multi-disciplinary artist, her musical expression is rooted in traditional Inuit throat singing and culture while also incorporating electronica, industrial, and metal influences. She developed a distinctive solo form of throat singing, unique because many forms of Inuit throat singing are performed by two women. The process of creating this piece involved translating the sounds that live in her body into the body of stringed instruments. Our voyage continues with Tagaq’s Sivunittini, which means “the future ones.” She says, “My hope is to bring a little bit of the land to future musicians through this piece. There’s a disconnect in the human condition, a disconnect from nature, and it has caused a great deal of social anxiety and fear, as well as a lack of true meaning of health, and a lack of a relationship with what life is, so maybe this piece can be a little bit of a wake-up.” The things we learn from processing our waking lives and thoughts at night become catalysts to move us forward. Through our dreams, we can nurture hope and grapple with anxiety.
Our quartet loves the idea of pairing Bartók with Haydn in the same program, as both composers revolutionized the string quartet and have inspired us to approach both older and newer music with fresh eyes and ears. After journeying through the magical hours of the night, sunrise fills us with awe. With the first lines of Haydn’s Op. 76 No. 4 quartet, the sky is transformed as warm colors gradually spread across the horizon and climb. The music unfurls in an improvisatory way before the rays of the sun emerge at last, assured and bright. Haydn plays with mirrored responses in the first movement as Bartók did, having the cello respond to the opening violin material by descending insteading of rising. The second movement brings us a memory of the tenderness of night, with pulsing eighth notes reminiscent of Clara Schumann’s song. Whimsical country dances bring us out of the dream, with a hurdy-gurdy making a special appearance in the trio. The Finale starts with a charming stumble and a mischievous nature, perhaps pre-caffeination. The coffee kicks in by the end, as we are off and running, leaping into the brilliance and optimism of a new day.
-Miho Saegusa
COMMUNITY
Reena Esmail (b.1983): Ragamala (2018), I. Fantasie – Bihag Overlay
Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847): Four Pieces for String Quartet, Op. 81
No. 3 Capriccio in E Minor
Judd Greenstein (b.1979): Four on the Floor (2006)
Silvestre Revueltas (1899-1940): String Quartet No. 4, Música de Feria (1932)
Clara Schumann (1819-1896): Die stille Lotosblume from Sechs Lieder, Op. 13 No. 6 (1844)
Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel (1805-1847): String Quartet in E-flat Major (1834)
Community is a two-part exploration of kinship and harmony. The first half of the program follows individual voices as they weave around one another before coalescing into a texture that is stronger than any single entity. The program opens with the first movement of Reena Esmail’s Ragamala, a work that was conceived during a year Esmail spent in India studying Hindustani classical music . This movement, named after a raag entitled Bihag, begins with ever-evolving layers of drones that emerge from niente (from nothingness), ultimately creating a kaleidoscopic carpet of shimmering sound. From these drones, the elements of the raag emerge and one-by-one, each member of the quartet emerges from their supporting role to take a brief soloistic one, interspersing their lines with their colleagues before receding back into the continuous hum of the masses. Esmail writes of her concert experiences in India that audience members would subconsciously hum phrases, or “pakads” of the raag, under their breath - creating their own chamber music with the drones being intoned onstage: “It had a magical feeling – as if that raag was present in the air, and tiny wisps of it were already starting to precipitate into the audible world in anticipation of the performance. It felt like a connection between the audience and the performer, as they prepared themselves to enjoy what was to come.” We view this meditative, almost hypnotic movement as an invitation not only to ourselves, as a celebration of our soloistic and supportive voices that form our quartet, but also to the audience to join us in this celebration throughout the course of the program.
Felix Mendelssohn’s Capriccio, the third piece from his Four Pieces for String Quartet Op. 81, intensifies the inherent power held by the individual voices within a community. These four individual pieces were written at various points in his life and were only published together after his death. Mendelssohn revered Bach and this piece feels like an homage to the preludes and fugues of Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier that is filtered through Mendelssohn’s Romantic sensibility. The piece opens with a brief introductory section featuring a searching melody in the violin before launching into the fugue. Throughout the fugue, the instruments coalesce and break off again in various combinations as the piece develops increasing emotional intensity before finishing with a moment of impassioned unity from all instruments. The fugue is a celebration of the interplay between individuality and unity that is an integral part of chamber music.
From Mendelssohn’s churning, fiery fugue explodes a work of equal intensity except this time inspired by feelings of joy. Judd Greenstein’s Four on the Floor, written for celebration of a friend’s wedding, employs virtuosic double stop technique from all four members to transform the smaller scale string quartet into something more akin to a string octet. These double stops are played at an exhilarating pace and incorporate irresistible rhythmic grooves with dramatic dynamic shifts, sometimes dropping suddenly into a quiet, bubbling intensity or exploding into a raucous, dancing cacophony. Four on the Floor is written in a loose ternary form (A-B-A), with a strikingly contrasting middle section consisting of quick and fleeting individual notes that cascade in, through, and around one another, singing as individuals that gradually move towards common ground before joining hands to burst forth once more into a joyful, celebratory recapitulation to close out the first half of our program.
The second half of Community explores many multifaceted twists and complications born from the human experience. It begins with a dramatic offering by composer Silvestre Revueltas: a violinist, conductor, and central figure in early 20th century Mexican music. He had an active career as a violinist before becoming the assistant conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra of Mexico and later principal conductor of Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional. During this time, he began to devote more of his energy to composition while also doing much to promote contemporary music in Mexico. As a composer, Revueltas is important both as a Mexican nationalist as well as an early modernist.
Revueltas’s String Quartet No. 4: Música de feria (Fair Music) is a vibrant and raucous introduction to his unique voice. In this condensed single movement work, Revueltas places the listener in the position of being at the center of a plaza with the sounds of the fair all around. Snatches of brass band music and folk songs filter through and compete with the sounds of people talking and celebrating. Rather than smoothing out the cacophony of the fair, Revueltas captures it in all of its messy glory with quick changes of character and often competing strands of music. Música de feria is a joyous celebration of the sounds of a community coming together to make music and celebrate.
From the sounds of the fair we move to Clara Schumann’s “Die stille Lotosblume” (“The Silent Lotus Blossom”) from Sechs Lieder, Op. 13 No. 6 in an arrangement by Aizuri Quartet violinist Miho Saegusa. In this lieder by Clara Schumann, one of the leading composers and performers of her time, the listener is an observer of a peaceful and melancholy nighttime scene. The lyrics speak of a solitary lotus blossom floating in a lake at night while a swan circles round it singing “sweetly and quietly.” After the energy and cacophony of the Revueltas, this lieder is a space for contemplation and repose.
Closing our program is an offering by Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel, a gifted and imaginative musician and composer whose music is rightfully experiencing a rebirth in popularity. While she never attained the immense popularity of her brother Felix during her lifetime, she was nevertheless a woman of profound musical knowledge and creativity, to the point that she was Felix’s primary musical counsel for the majority of his output as well as a trusted source of performance practice for his music among musicians of her time. Her limited oeuvre consists mainly of lieder and solo piano works, but we are lucky to have three surviving major chamber works: a piano trio, a piano quartet, and her String Quartet in E-flat Major, the last of which closes our program.
Mendelssohn-Hensel’s string quartet is a testament to her uniquely musical voice which often eschews traditional form in favor of ambiguity and exploration. The first movement replaces the traditional lively Allegro with a slower Adagio that feathers the line between melancholy and hope. The movement begins with a falling line from the first violin that resembles a sigh, harmonized by a minor VI chord that defies the home key of E-flat Major. Only three bars later, Mendelssohn-Hensel completes her descent into darkness, taking the quartet into the somber key of C minor. This tonal ambiguity serves as a defining feature for the four movements of her quartet, which takes the quartet and the audience through a journey of the unexpected and often raises more questions than answers. Sighing resignation is often followed by outcries of defiance, scurrying scherzo textures exist alongside explosive, unbridled joy, and bright, shining sunlight is interrupted by dark, surging storms. And yet, through it all shines the voice of a composer whose commitment to her own musical explorations garnered unwavering trust from her musical community in spite of the social norms that fought to push her to the sidelines.
-Caleb van der Swaagh and Brian Hong
MUSIC AND MIGRATION WITH KINAN AZMEH
Rhiannon Giddens (b. 1977): At the Purchaser’s Option
Kinan Azmeh (b. 1976): Improvisation
Layale Chaker (b. 1990): Matrescence
Kinan Azmeh (b. 1976): The Fence the Rooftop and the Distant Sea
Komitas Vartabed (1869-1935): Armenian Folk Songs
Wang Lu (b. 1982): Between Air
Michi Wiancko (b. 1976): Lullaby for the Transient
Paquito d’Rivera (b. 1948): Preludio y Merengue
Music and Migration is a collaborative program stemming from a deep friendship between the Aizuri Quartet and the Syrian-American clarinetist and composer Kinan Azmeh. All five of us have different personal relationships to and experiences of migration, as do our families, and the music of this concert approaches the theme of migration in the broadest possible terms, as a physical journey and state of mind, and something that occurs both between and within countries. Built around a new commission from the extraordinary composer and violinist Layale Chaker, this program includes three additional works (by Azmeh, Wang Lu and Michi Wiancko), wide-ranging in style and approach, commissioned by the Aizuri Quartet to respond to this theme. The music of the Armenian composer Komitas and the American vocalist/composer/banjo and fiddle player Giddens expresses both the sorrow and resilience of peoples forcibly separated from their homelands and experiencing the horrors of genocide and slavery. Closing the program is the music of the Cuban-American saxophonist, clarinetist and composer Paquito D’Rivera, which beautifully straddles multiple cultures and musical traditions.
-Karen Ouzounian
Rhiannon Giddens: At the Purchaser's Option, arr. Jacob Garchik (2016)
Rhiannon Giddens' At the Purchaser’s Option with variations is an instrumental variation of a song from her album Freedom Highway (Nonesuch, 2017), arranged by Jacob Garchik. She wrote the song after finding in a book a 19th-century advertisement for a 22-year-old female slave whose 9-month-old baby was also for sale, but “at the purchaser’s option.” This piece comes from that advertisement, and from thinking about what that woman's life might have been like.
-From The Kronos Quartet website
This piece is a part of The Kronos Quartet's 50 for the Future project
Kinan Azmeh: The Fence, The Rooftop and the Distant Sea (2017, 2018)
The Fence,The Rooftop and the Distant Sea for clarinet and cello was commissioned by the ElbPhilharmonie for Yo-Yo Ma and myself and premiered in January 2017. A fence, a rooftop and the distant sea were all present there facing my desk while I finished the piece in Beirut in December 2016.These elements were a reminder of how near my home town of Damascus was yet how far it seemed after being away for 5 years.The piece is about random memories of individuals, more precisely it is about two characters searching for memories from home, and how they jump from one random memory to another while allowing themselves to drift away with their own thoughts, until they realize that the most powerful memories were the simplest, and they hold on to that endlessly.
-Kinan Azmeh
This clarinet quintet version was commissioned by the Aizuri Quartet during their residency at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Komitas Vartabed: Armenian Folk Songs, arr. Sergei Aslamazian
Life was not easy for Komitas. Orphaned at a young age, he was taken in by priests in Echmiadzin (home of the Echmiadzin Cathedral, the mother church of the Armenian Apostolic Church), where his musical talent was recognized and nurtured. For a time he studied and traveled in Europe, and while he was gaining recognition abroad for sharing Armenian music, he also struggled with the conservative faction of his Church back at home. While he was trying to gain a wider audience for Armenian music in Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul), he, along with many other intellectual and cultural leaders, were deported as the Armenian Genocide began in 1915. He was eventually released but suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, living in asylums until his death nearly twenty years later.
What is remarkable about these five short pieces, arranged for string quartet by Sergei Aslamazian, is their sense of innocence. They range from contemplative (Yergink Ampel A/It’s Cloudy), to boisterous (Echmiadzni Bar/Echmiadzin Dance), and charming (Kaqavik/The Patridge). It’s as if Komitas found solace in his devotion to capture the purity and simplicity of these folk songs. For us it is special to explore this music with our cellist Karen Ouzounian, to discover more about her Armenian roots and the music which has become an enduring symbol of home and identity for a people separated from their homeland.
-Miho Saegusa
Wang Lu: Between Air (2018)
Between the flow of naturally pulsating motion and the inhaling/exhaling of instrumental bodies, this piece gently explores breath-like phrases through subtle micro-shadings and timbral deviations to create a continually deepening emotional journey.
-Wang Lu
Commissioned by the Aizuri Quartet during their residency at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Michi Wiancko: Lullaby for the Transient (2018)
In Lullaby for the Transient, I juxtapose two big influences on my musical style: my experience performing some of the great classical chamber and solo works of our time, and my love for song and the human voice. It begins with the simple song texture of melody plus accompaniment, though often containing an underlying feeling of conflict, expressed through unexpectedly shifting meters, percussive strikes on instrument bodies, or wildly interruptive atonal flourishes. The listener will hopefully hear that "song" transform gradually into the volatile and virtuosic voice of an instrumental soloist - our transient heroine moving from space to space, searching for a final resting place of peace and beauty, but in the end being forced to accept the persistence of unrest.
-Michi Wiancko
Commissioned by the Aizuri Quartet during their residency at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Paquito D'Rivera: Preludio y Merengue (2003)
Winner of several Grammy and Latin Grammy awards, instrumentalist and composer Paquito D’Rivera is a notable figure in both the Latin jazz and classical worlds. He has soloed with major orchestras such as the London Philharmonic, the National Symphony Orchestra, and the Baltimore Symphony, and in 1991 he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from Carnegie Hall for his major contributions to Latin music. The Merengue portion of this piece was premiered by distinguished artists including Yo-Yo Ma in 2003 at Zankel Hall in NYC, and later went on to win a Grammy for Best Instrumental Composition in 2004. It has gained much popularity, and the composition now exists in multiple instrumental arrangements.
-Ayane Kozasa