NEW MUSIC SEASON

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1 NEW MUSIC THURSDAY EVENING, JANUARY 17, 2019 AT 6:30 & 9:00 Daniel and Joanna S. Rose Studio GILLES VONSATTEL, piano ESCHER STRING QUARTET ADAM-BARNETT HART, violin DANBI UM, violin PIERRE LAPOINTE, viola BROOK SPELTZ, cello SEASON

2 The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center 70 Lincoln Center Plaza, 10th Floor New York, NY Anthony Cheung s All Roads was commissioned by Music Accord for Gilles Vonsattel and the Escher String Quartet. This concert is made possible, in part, by The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, and the Francis Goelet Charitable Lead Trusts. The Chamber Music Society is deeply grateful to Board member Paul Gridley for his very generous gift of the Hamburg Steinway & Sons model D concert grand piano we are privileged to hear this evening.

3 NEW MUSIC THURSDAY EVENING, JANUARY 17, 2019 AT 6:30 & 9:00 3,901ST AND 3,902ND CONCERTS Daniel and Joanna S. Rose Studio GILLES VONSATTEL, piano ESCHER STRING QUARTET ADAM BARNETT-HART, violin DANBI UM, violin PIERRE LAPOINTE, viola BROOK SPELTZ, cello PER NØRGÅRD (b. 1932) WILLIAM BOLCOM (b. 1938) ED BENNETT (b. 1975) ANTHONY CHEUNG (b. 1982) Quartet No. 10 for Strings, "Høsttidløs" ( ) BARNETT-HART, UM, LAPOINTE, SPELTZ Suite for Violin and Cello (1997) Prelude Very free and fast With energy Stately, slow Very fast and skittish Street dances UM, SPELTZ For Marcel Dzama for Piano, Violin, Cello, and Electronics (2007) VONSATTEL, BARNETT-HART, SPELTZ All Roads for Piano, Two Violins, Viola, and Cello (CMS Co-Commission, World Premiere of the Revised Version) (2018) Introduction: First Detour I: Forking Paths Interlude: Second Detour II: Circuitous Routes (Winding Passacaglias) Interlude: Third Detour III: Estuary Interlude: Fourth Detour IV: Convergence VONSATTEL, BARNETT-HART, UM, LAPOINTE, SPELTZ PLEASE TURN OFF CELL PHONES AND OTHER ELECTRONIC DEVICES. This evening's 9:00 concert is being streamed live at ChamberMusicSociety.org/WatchLive Photographing, sound recording, or videotaping this event is prohibited.

4 NOTES ON THE PROGRAM Quartet No. 10 for Strings, "Høsttidløs" PER NØRGÅRD Born July 13, 1932 in Gentofte, Denmark. Composed in Premiered on April 19, 2005 at the EuroArt Prague Festival by the Kroger String Quartet. Tonight is the first CMS performance of this piece. Duration: 14 minutes Per Nørgård is recognized as one of the most famous Danish composers alive today. His music has constantly evolved over the past seven decades, and he eagerly grapples with both complex compositional systems and the forces of disorder and chaos. His early works were influenced by the late symphonies of Sibelius, including his First Symphony, Sinfonia Austera (1954). By the late 1950s he created a system of infinity rows ( where one line spreads out into thousands of lines ), later extending the technique to tone lakes ( a reservoir of notes ). The first work to use the composer s fully developed system of tone lakes was the Sixth String Quartet, Tintinnabulary (1986). At the same time, Nørgård went through what he once called a chaos period. He became interested in the work of Swiss artist Adolf Wölfli, who suffered from psychosis and created thousands of intricate drawing while living in an institution. A number of Nørgård s compositions from the 1980s were influenced by Wölfli, notably the Fourth Symphony, Indischer Roosengaarten und Chineesischer Hexensee (Indian Rose Garden and Chinese Witch s Sea). Nørgård s sizable body of work includes five operas, eight symphonies, ten string quartets, incidental music and film scores, numerous solo vocal and choral works, and many works for percussion. He was nominated for a Grammy for Best Classical Contemporary Composition in 1997 for his Fifth Symphony, received a Diapason d Or in 1999 for his First Violin Concerto, Helle Nacht, won the New York Philharmonic s Marie- Josée Kravis Prize in 2014, and was awarded the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize in In the 1950s, he studied with Vagn Holmboe and Finn Høffding at the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen and then traveled to Paris to study with Nadia Boulanger. He taught at the Royal Academy of Music in Århus from 1965 until his retirement in Nørgård writes, During the composition of my tenth string quartet a flower-name, høst-tidløs, came to my mind and it would not leave me again. [høsttidløs is actually autumn crocus in English, but the composer prefers harvest-timeless, to maintain some of the associations of the Danish flower-name, red.] The paradoxical union of a seasonal time (harvest) and no-timeat-all was a good fit to the sections of the work that I had composed at that time, and I decided to

5 tentatively stick to that title for the work-in-progress, and now, having finished the piece, I can say that it is still a fitting title and it stands. Enough about the title, I will go on to describe the music, a somewhat more precarious project. My tenth string quartet is probably the most basic string quartet that I have composed; melodically and in sound it employs the naturally based overtones and undertones (perceived at major and minor, respectively), and rhythmically it is based on growth, on the principles of the Golden Section, and the structure itself contrasts abundance and exuberance with sections of immobility and contemplation. However, Melos, melody, is definitely the dominating aspect of MY TENTH STRING QUARTET IS PROBABLY THE MOST BASIC STRING QUARTET THAT I HAVE COMPOSED; MELODICALLY AND IN SOUND IT EMPLOYS THE NATURALLY BASED OVERTONES AND UNDERTONES, AND RHYTHMICALLY IT IS BASED ON GROWTH. my String Quartet No. 10; behind even the most rhythmically complex or pure sonoric sections lies a firm if hidden basis of melodic or polyphonic ideas. Suite for Violin and Cello WILLIAM BOLCOM Born May 26, 1938 in Seattle. Composed in Premiered on November 17, 1997 in Brussels by violinist Sergiu Luca and cellist Roel Dieltiens. Tonight is the first CMS performance of this piece. Duration: 12 minutes National Medal of Arts, Pulitzer Prize, and Grammy Awardwinner William Bolcom is an American composer of chamber, operatic, vocal, choral, and symphonic music. In celebration of Bolcom s 80th birthday in 2018, nine commissioned works were premiered throughout the year. He has written four violin sonatas; nine symphonies; four operas (McTeague, A View from the Bridge, A Wedding, and Dinner at Eight), plus several musical theater operas; 12 string quartets and numerous other chamber works; two film scores (Hester Street and Illuminata); incidental music for stage plays, including Arthur Miller's Broken Glass; choral and vocal works; and fanfares and occasional pieces. His setting of William Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience, a full evening's work for soloists, choruses, and orchestra, was recorded by Naxos and won four Grammy Awards in 2005: Best Choral Performance, Best Classical Contemporary Composition, Best Classical Album, The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center

6 and Producer of the Year, Classical. As a pianist Bolcom frequently collaborates with his wife and musical partner, mezzo-soprano Joan Morris, performing his own works, cabaret songs, show tunes, and American popular songs of the 20th century. They have recorded 25 albums together Autumn Leaves was released in Bolcom studied with Darius Milhaud while working on his master s degree at Mills College, with Leland Smith while working on his D.M.A. at Stanford University, and with Olivier Messiaen and Milhaud at the Paris Conservatoire, where he received the 2éme Prix de Composition. He joined the faculty of the University of Michigan in 1973, where he was named the Ross Lee Finney Distinguished University Professor of Composition in 1994, and retired in 2008 after 35 years. Bolcom writes, The Suite for Violin and Violoncello, written for Sergiu Luca and Roel Dieltiens who premiered it in Brussels in 1997, refers to the Baroque suite form in its outline. The Prelude, reminiscent of the fantasy-like unmeasured preludes in Louis Couperin's suites, should feel that way in performance although written in conventional notation. With energy, in triple meter, recalls the courante and similar suite members, as Stately, slow does the sarabande. Very fast and skittish serves as a humorous introduction to the final Street dances, where I wanted to evoke the feeling of a break dance." For Marcel Dzama for Piano, Violin, Cello, and Electronics ED BENNETT Born March 15, 1975 in Bangor, Northern Ireland. Composed in Premiered on April 13, 2007 in Bromsgrove, England, by the Fidelio Trio. Tonight is the first CMS performance of this piece. Duration: 12 minutes Irish composer Ed Bennett s music is often characterized by its strong rhythmic energy, extreme contrasts, and the combination of acoustic, electronic, and multimedia elements. His body of work includes largescale orchestral works, ensemble pieces, solo works, electronic music, opera, installations, and works for dance and film. Noted collaborators and performers of his work include the BBC Symphony and Philharmonic orchestras, the National Orchestra of Belgium, RTE National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, Ulster Orchestra, the London Sinfonietta, Crash Ensemble, Icebreaker, Riga Sinfonietta, Orkest de ereprijs, Fidelio Trio, Berlin Percussion Ensemble, Ensemble SurPlus, Lontano, Concorde, the Smith Quartet, Noszferatu, and Ensemble Ars Nova. Recent projects include Psychedelia for Thomas Adès and the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, Out of Nowhere a large-scale work for piano and electronics for Xenia Pestova, Suspect Device for amplified ensemble for Icebreaker, an opera in collaboration with the writer Stacey Gregg, Internal Organs for mechanical organ and ensemble

7 for the Dutch ensemble Orkest de Ereprijs, Heavy Western for violin and ensemble for Barbara Lueneburg and Decibel, and Freefalling also for the RTE National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland. Bennett performs with and directs his own ensemble, Decibel, which is dedicated to the performance of new and experimental crossdiscipline work and with whom he recently released three critically acclaimed CDs of his music. Dzama Stories (Quartz Music) received five stars from Musical Criticism, and My Broken Machines (NMC) was Chicago Time Out s No. 1 Contemporary CD of His most recent release Togetherness (2018) received five stars from Classical Music Magazine. He is Reader in Composition at Birmingham Conservatoire and from he was Composerin-Residence at Royal Holloway, University of London. In 2012 he was awarded the prestigious Philip Leverhulme Prize for the Performing Arts and in 2014 he was awarded a fellowship by the New York-based Civitella Ranieri Foundation. Bennett writes, Marcel Dzama is a Canadian artist whose work has been called outsider art. He draws significant inspiration for his creations from his rural home of Winnipeg and his paintings and sculptures often include strange and bizarre images of people and creatures from the local folklore of this area. In a sense he created a world where these funny and frightening creatures come to life. My piece is not programmatic or in any way trying to represent the art of Dzama, but at the time of composing I was very interested in his art and I drew inspiration from the strangeness and energy of the work. All Roads for Piano, Two Violins, Viola, and Cello ANTHONY CHEUNG Born January 17, 1982 in San Francisco. Composed in Tonight is the world premiere of the revised version of this piece; co-commissioned by CMS. Duration: 25 minutes Composer/pianist Anthony Cheung has a body of work that ranges from solo to orchestral works, occasionally with electronics. His music reveals an interest in the ambiguity of sound sources and the subtle transformation and manipulation of timbre allied with harmony. It also engages poetic imagery, syntax and rhetoric, natural phenomena, and the visual arts, and is heavily influenced by improvisatory traditions. He has been commissioned by leading groups such as the Ensemble Modern, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Cleveland Orchestra (as the Daniel R. Lewis Young Composer Fellow), Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, Scharoun Ensemble Berlin, and the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE). His work Lyra was commissioned for the New York Philharmonic at the request of Henri Dutilleux, as part of the orchestra s inaugural Kravis Prize for New Music. In addition, his music has The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center

8 THE IMAGERY AND METAPHOR OF ROADS AND PATHS DIVERGING, CIRCLING, FLOWING, AND EXPANDING, AND FINALLY REJOINING, GAVE SHAPE TO THE JOURNEY OF THE PIECE. been performed by the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Chicago Symphony Orchestra (on its MusicNOW series), Minnesota Orchestra, Ensemble Linea, Le Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, wild Up, eighth blackbird, and Dal Niente. His recordings include three portrait discs: Cycles and Arrows, with the Spektral Quartet, ICE, and Atlas Ensemble (New Focus, 2018), Dystemporal, with the Talea Ensemble and Ensemble Intercontemporain (Wergo, 2016), and Roundabouts, with the Ensemble Modern and Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra (Ensemble Modern Medien 2014). As a performer and advocate for new music, he was a co-founder of the Talea Ensemble, performing as a pianist and serving as artistic director. The recipient of a 2016 Guggenheim Fellowship, Cheung has also won awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and ASCAP, and first prize in the Sixth International Dutilleux Competition, as well as a Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome. He received a BA in Music and History from Harvard and a doctorate from Columbia University, and was a Junior Fellow at Harvard. He studied composition with Tristan Murail and Bernard Rands, and piano with Robert Levin and Paul Hersh. He is currently an assistant professor at the University of Chicago. Cheung writes, As I began writing this piece, I kept being drawn into a tune that has haunted me continuously for some time. Billy Strayhorn s Lotus Blossom, with its poignant falling lines and close, sighing intervals, is a special shade of bittersweet. In this perfectly melancholy tune, a melodic sequence blooms into an expanded lament, only to rise hopefully and pleadingly during its bridge and then resolve resignedly downwards again. And its accompanying harmony, filled with suspended longing and tinged with regret, holds the secret to why Duke Ellington considered it just about my favorite, possibly of his close collaborator s output. The mood and sinuous profile of 'Lotus Blossom, at one point titled All Roads Lead Back to You, became the starting point of All Roads. I envisaged it with more and more layers, complicating and implicating the harmony, and with ever more momentary suspensions and resolutions. As the piece grew to its final form, the reimagined tune became the through-line of the entire work, returning in distant transformations and detours in between and throughout the pairs of four main movements. And the imagery and metaphor of roads and paths diverging, circling, flowing, and expanding, and finally rejoining, gave shape to the journey of the piece. In the Introduction ( First Detour ), the piano s sustained notes guide through traces of the strained melody, with outer voices both harmonizing and atomizing, and strings producing a hazy, suspended sheen. The full quintet begins in earnest ('Forking Paths') when the strings take over at what would

9 be the bridge, pushing against the piano s responses, with ever more urgent, repeated swells. In the following Interlude ( Second Detour ), the lyrical strings become the current against which the piano s active ornamentation once again resists. This flows into a new movement, Circuitous Routes (Winding Passacaglias), which cycles through several expanding chord sequences, around which torrents of rapid piano activity begin to accumulate. It ends with steely vertical sonorities that vaporize into ever-higher reaches. In its aftermath, a lyrical episode for piano alone traces the curves and outlines of the initial melody, its shadowy profile still intact, but morphed into something entirely different. All instruments are again united in Movement III ( Estuary ), the resonances of the piano providing the anchor from which the strings issue streams of quiet, buzzing intensity. A final interlude recalls the even more distant opening, now three times removed, before the full ensemble launches into the final movement ( Convergence ), which is also the longest and most expansive. Extroverted in rhythm and groove, it occasionally recalls the quiet, sighing music of earlier, only to revert to its propulsive engine and bring the piece to its charged conclusion. The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center is a member of Music Accord. Comprising top classical music presenting organizations throughout the United States, Music Accord is a consortium that commissions new works in the chamber music, instrumental recital, and song genres. The consortium's goal is to create a significant number of new works and to ensure presentation of these works in venues throughout this country and, if the occasion arises, internationally. The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center

10 ABOUT THE ARTISTS ESCHER STRING QUARTET The Escher String Quartet has received acclaim for its profound musical insight and rare tonal beauty. A former BBC New Generation Artist, the quartet has performed at the BBC Proms at Cadogan Hall and is a regular guest at Wigmore Hall. In its home town of New York, the ensemble serves as season artists of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, where it has presented the complete Zemlinsky quartet cycle as well as being one of five quartets chosen to collaborate in a complete presentation of Beethoven s string quartets. The season finds the Escher Quartet touring the U.S. extensively, performing in numerous cities and venues including New York s Alice Tully Hall, Washington D.C. s Kennedy Center, the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa, Chicago s Harris Theater, West Palm Beach, Baltimore, and Pasadena. Internationally, the quartet returns for a season long residency at London s Wigmore Hall, where it will present three self-curated programs highlighting American and American-influenced compositions. The Escher Quartet has made a distinctive impression throughout Europe, with recent debuts including the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Berlin Konzerthaus, London s Kings Place, Slovenian Philharmonic Hall, Les Grands Interprètes Geneva, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, and Auditorium du Louvre. The group has appeared at festivals such as the Heidelberg Spring Festival, Budapest s Franz Liszt Academy, Dublin s Great Music in Irish Houses, the Risør Chamber Music Festival in Norway, the Hong Kong International Chamber Music Festival, and the Perth International Arts Festival in Australia. Alongside its growing European profile, the Escher Quartet continues to flourish in its home country, performing at the Aspen Music Festival, Bowdoin Music Festival, Toronto Summer Music, Chamber Music San Francisco, Music@Menlo, and the Ravinia and Caramoor festivals. The Escher Quartet is also currently in residence at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, the Tuesday Musical Association in Akron, and the University of Akron. Recordings of the complete Mendelssohn quartets, released on the BIS label in , were received with the highest critical acclaim, with comments such as eloquent, full-blooded playing... The four players offer a beautiful blend of individuality and accord (BBC Music Magazine). The Escher s most recent recording, beloved quartets of Dvořák, Borodin, and Tchaikovsky, was met with equal enthusiasm. The quartet has also recorded the complete Zemlinsky String Quartets in two volumes, released on the Naxos label in 2013 and Within months of its inception in 2005, the ensemble came to the attention of key musical figures worldwide. Championed by the Emerson Quartet, the Escher Quartet was invited by both Pinchas Zukerman and Itzhak Perlman to be Quartet-in-Residence at each artist's summer festival: the Young Artists Program at Canada s National Arts Centre and the Perlman Chamber Music Program on Shelter Island, NY. The quartet has since become one of the very few chamber ensembles to be awarded the prestigious Avery Fisher

11 Career Grant. The Escher Quartet takes its name from the Dutch graphic artist M.C. Escher, inspired by Escher s method of interplay between individual components working together to form a whole. GILLES VONSATTEL Swiss-born American pianist Gilles Vonsattel is an artist of extraordinary versatility and originality. He is the recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant and the Andrew Wolf Chamber Music Award, and winner of the Naumburg and Geneva competitions. He has appeared with the Munich Philharmonic, Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, Boston Symphony, and San Francisco Symphony, and performed recitals and chamber music at Ravinia, Tokyo s Musashino Hall, Wigmore Hall, Bravo! Vail, Chamber Music Northwest, La Roque d Anthéron, Music@Menlo, the Lucerne festival, and Spoleto USA. Deeply committed to the performance of contemporary music, he has premiered numerous works both in the United States and Europe and worked closely with notable composers such as Jörg Widmann, Heinz Holliger, and George Benjamin. Recent and upcoming projects include appearances with the Chicago Symphony (Bernstein s Age of Anxiety), Gothenburg Symphony (Messiaen s Turangalîla Symphonie), Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana (Berg s Kammerkonzert), Mozart concertos with the Vancouver Symphony and Florida Orchestra, as well as multiple appearances with the Chamber Music Society. An alum of The Bowers Program (formerly CMS Two), Mr. Vonsattel received his bachelor s degree in political science and economics from Columbia University and his master s degree from The Juilliard School. He is on the faculty of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center

12 UPCOMING EVENTS AT CMS ROSE STUDIO & LATE NIGHT ROSE SOLD OUT! THURSDAY, JANUARY 24, 6:30 PM DANIEL & JOANNA S. ROSE STUDIO THURSDAY, JANUARY 24, 9:00 PM DANIEL & JOANNA S. ROSE STUDIO Featuring works by Janáček, Dvořák, and Korngold. The 9:00 PM event will be streamed live at ESTEEMED ENSEMBLE SUNDAY, JANUARY 27, 5:00 PM ALICE TULLY HALL TUESDAY, JANUARY 29, 7:30 PM ALICE TULLY HALL Wu Han, Daniel Hope, Paul Neubauer, and David Finckel reunite for a program of piano quartet classics. MASTER CLASS WITH DANIEL HOPE MONDAY, JANUARY 28, 11:00 AM DANIEL & JOANNA S. ROSE STUDIO Daniel Hope leads a master class with talented students. This event will be streamed live at