Alexander String Quartet
Zakarias Grafilo & Frederick Lifsitz, violins
Paul Yarbrough, viola Sandy Wilson, cello
Concert
Program
PITTSBURGH CHAMBER MUSIC
SOCIETY
New Hazlett
Theater, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Monday, May
5, 2008 at 8:00 PM
Selections from JohnÕs Book of Alleged
Dances (1994) (listen to Dogjam) John
Adams (b. 1947)
Jazz Play (1992) Wayne
Peterson (b. 1927)
Mythic Birds Waltz (1983) Terry
Riley (b. 1935)
—INTERMISSION—
String Quartet No. 8 in E
minor, Op. 59, No. 2 (1806) Ludwig
van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Allegro
Molto adagio
Allegretto
Finale: Presto
The
Alexander String Quartet is represented by
BesenArts LLC
508 First Street, Suite 4W
Hoboken, NJ 07030-7823
The Alexander String Quartet records for Arte
Nova Classics and FoghornClassics
www.asq4.com
*******
JohnÕs
Book of Alleged Dances (1994)
Born
1947
Resides
in San Francisco
The
Alleged Dances
were the next pieces written after the Violin Concerto, a complex work that
took a full year to compose. The Concerto emboldened me to go
further with string writing, and some of the techniques and gestures IÕd
touched on in it appeared again in the new string quartet, only in a less
earnest guise. The ÒBookÓ is a
collection of ten dances, six of which are accompanied by a recorded percussion
track made of prepared piano sounds.
The prepared piano was, of course, the invention of John Cage, who first
put erasers, nuts, bolts, and other damping objects in the strings of the grand
piano, thereby transforming it into a kind of pygmy gamelan. In the original version of Alleged
Dances
the prepared piano sounds were organized as loops installed in an onstage
sampler, and one of the quartet players triggered them on cue with a foot
pedal. This made for a lot of
suspense in the live performance — perhaps too much, as the potential for
crash-and-burn was so high that Kronos eventually persuaded me to create a CD
of the loops, a decision that allowed for significantly less anxiety during
concerts.
The
dances were ÒallegedÓ because the steps for them had yet to be invented
(although by now a number of choreographers, including Paul Taylor, have
created pieces around them). The
general tone is dry, droll, sardonic.
The music was composed with the personalities of the Kronos players very
much in mind. The little pavane,
ÒSheÕs So Fine,Ó for example, is expressly made for Joan JeanrenaudÕs sweetly
lyrical high cello register, and the hoe-down, ÒDogjam,Ó honors David HarringtonÕs
bluegrass proclivities.
—John Adams
Reprinted with kind permission of
www.earbox.com.
ÒJazz
Play,Ó from String Quartet No. 2 (1991)
Born
1927, Albert Lea, Minnesota
Resides
since 1960 in San Francisco
String Quartet No. 2, dedicated to the
Alexander String Quartet, was commissioned by Composers, Inc., with a grant
from the Wallace A. Gerbode Foundation.
ÒJazz PlayÓ is the second of its two movements.
ÒJazz PlayÓ is a fond reminiscence of my days as a pianist during the
Bebop Era. It contains many
references — both melodic and rhythmic — to such standards as
ÒNight in Tunisia,Ó ÒCheryl,Ó ÒSalt Peanuts,Ó ÒKo Ko,Ó ÒBillieÕs Bounce,Ó and
ÒMoose the Mouche.Ó This not,
however, a jazz composition, but rather a work which uses jazz material in a
way consistent with the harmonic and melodic language of the first movement of
the quartet, ÒApparitionsÓ; the first six measures of ÒApparitionsÓ are
transposed and transformed to become the introductory gesture and first ÒthemeÓ
in ÒJazz Play.Ó What previously
was austere and foreboding now becomes light and euphoric.
After a steady increase in tension and tempos, a raucous, polyrhythmic
climax based on the opening motifs brings the quartet to an emphatic
conclusion.
—Wayne
Peterson
Born in Albert Lea,
Minnesota, in 1927, and living in San Francisco, California since 1960, Wayne
Peterson was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Music in 1992 crowning a
distinguished career which began in 1958 with the Free Variations premiered and
recorded by the Minnesota Orchestra under Antal Dorati. PetersonÕs recent
orchestral compositions include And the Winds Shall Blow a fantasy for saxophone
quartet, symphonic winds, brass, and percussion; Theseus for chamber orchestra;
and The Face of the Night, the Heart of the Dark, commissioned by the
San Francisco Symphony (awarded the Pulitzer).
PetersonÕs catalog of
more than 60 compositions includes works for orchestra, chorus, and chamber
ensemble. In addition to the
Pulitzer, Peterson has been honored with fellowships and commissions from the
Guggenheim, Koussevitzky, Fromm,
Gerbode, and Djerassi Foundations, and Meet The Composer, as well as an
award of distinction from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and
Letters. In 1990 he was a visiting artist at the American Academy in Rome.
Recent chamber works
include Vicissitudes, premiered by the New York New Music Ensemble in
recognition of the ensembleÕs twentieth season, Antiphonies (solo percussion), Colloquy (flute and harp), Inscape (flute, clarinet and
percussion), Four Piano Preludes, Peregrinations (solo clarinet), Monarch
of the Vine
(percussion quartet), Pop Sweet (String Quartet No. 3), Tympan Alley (soprano and
percussion) Quest
(flute and piano), Nonet (mixed ensemble), A Robert Herrick Motley (five a cappella
choruses); and An e.e. cummings Triptych (three a cappella choruses).
Among the recent compact
discs are all-Peterson recordings on Albany (Peregrinations, Diatribe, Duo, Ceremony After a
Fire Raid,
Colloquy,
String Quartet No. 1), and Koch International (Vicissitudes, Diptych, Labyrinth, Capriccio &
Duodecaphony),
Windup
(Rascher Quartet, BIS), String Quartet No. 2 (Alexander String
Quartet, Innova); Labyrinth (Earplay, Centaur), Sextet (San Francisco
Contemporary Chamber Players, CRI) and Janus on a North/South
Consonance CD.
Peterson has been active
as a guest composer at the Indiana University, University of Minnesota,
Brandeis University, U.C. Santa Barbara, the ComposerÕs Conference in
Wellesley, Massachusetts, and at the Festival of New Music at Sacramento State
University. He has served on the
nomination committee for the Pulitzer Prize in Music (1999 and 2000), and was a
jury member for the First Seoul International Competition for Composers in
2001. In addition, Peterson, in
joint sponsorship with San Francisco State University, established and
currently administers the Wayne Peterson Prize in Music Composition (since
1998).
Peterson has been
professor of music at San Francisco State University for more than three
decades and from 1992-94 was a guest professor of composition at Stanford
University. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota and was a
Fulbright Scholar at the Royal Academy of Music in London from 1953-54.
PetersonÕs music is
published by C.F. Peters Corporation, Boosey and Hawkes, Seesaw Music,
Trillenium Music (Turnbridge, Vermont), and Lawson-Gould.
TERRY
RILEY (1983)
Born
1935
Resides
in San Francisco area
Mythic
Birds Waltz,
which opens with a jazz ballad that Riley transcribed after improvising it on
the piano, also includes a number of segments he had written for a larger work
to be played by the composer and by sitarist Krishna Bhatt. The pieceÕs Indian rhythms shift into
something closer to ragtime, and 16th note Vivaldi type figures might subtly
start to swing, demonstrating RileyÕs growing confidence in mixing contrasting
themes and rhythms and metric changes in his quartet the way he does in his
solo improvisations.
—Mark Swed
Liner notes from Cadenza on the Night Plain (Kronos
Quartet/Hannibal Records, 1988).
Reprinted with permission.
California
composer Terry Riley launched what is now known as the Minimalist movement with
his revolutionary classic In C in 1964.
This seminal work provided a new concept in musical form based on
interlocking repetitive patterns.
ItÕs impact was to change the course of 20th Century music and its
influence has been heard in the works of prominent composers such as Steve
Reich, Philip Glass, and John Adams, and in the music of Rock groups such as
The Who, The Soft Machine, Tangerine Dream, Curved Air, and many others. RileyÕs hypnotic, multi-layered,
polymetric, brightly orchestrated Eastern flavored improvisations and
compositions set the stage for the prevailing interest in a New Tonality.
In
1970, Riley became a disciple of the revered North Indian raga vocalist, Pandit
Pran Nath, and made the first of his numerous trips to India to study with the
Master. He appeared frequently in
concert with the legendary singer as tampura, tabla and vocal accompanist over
the next 26 years until Pran NathÕs passing in 1996.
While
teaching at Mills College in Oakland in the 1970Õs Riley met David Harrington,
founder and leader of the Kronos Quartet, beginning a long association that has
so far produced thirteen string quartets; a concerto for string quartet, The
Sands,
which was the Salzburg FestivalÕs first ever new music commission; and the 2003
work Sun Rings,
a multi media piece for choir, visuals, and space sounds, commissioned by
NASA. Most recently he has
completed The Cusp of Magic, for string quartet and pipa. Cadenza on the Night Plain was selected by both Time and Newsweek as one of the 10 Best
Classical Albums of the Year. The
epic five-quartet cycle, Salome Dances for Peace, was selected as the #1
Classical Album of the Year by USA Today, and was nominated for a Grammy Award.
String Quartet in E minor, Op. 59, No. 2
Born December 16, 1770, Bonn
Died March 26, 1827, Vienna
When Count Andreas Razumovsky, the
Russian ambassador to Vienna and chamber music enthusiast, commissioned a set
of three string quartets from Beethoven in 1805, he could not possibly have
known what he would receive in return.
Beethoven had at that time written one set of six quartets (published in
1801), cast very much in the high classical mold as set out by Haydn and
Mozart. Doubtless Razumovsky
expected something on this order, and he provided Beethoven with some Russian
themes and asked that he include one in each of the three quartets.
The three quartets Beethoven wrote in
1806, however, were so completely original that in one stroke they redefined
the whole conception of the string quartet. These are massive quartets, both in duration and dramatic
scope, and it is no surprise that they alienated virtually everyone who heard
them; only with time did BeethovenÕs astonishing achievement in this music
become clear. Trying to take the
measure of this new music, some early critics referred to the Razumovsky
quartets as Òsymphony quartets,Ó but this is misleading, for the quartets are
true chamber music. But it is true
that what the Eroica did for the symphony, these quartets did for the string
quartet: they opened new vistas, entirely new conceptions of what the string quartet
might be and of the power it might unleash.
The first Razumovsky quartet is broad
and heroic and the third extroverted and virtuosic, but the second has defied
easy characterization. Part of the
problem is that in this quartet Beethoven seems to be experimenting with new ideas
about themes and harmony. The
thematic material of the first movement in particular has baffled many, for it
seems almost consciously non‑thematic, and harmonically this quartet can
seem elusive as well: all four movements are in some form of E, but Beethoven
refuses to settle into any key for very long, and one key will melt into
another (often unexpected) key in just a matter of measures.
Such a description would seem to make
the Quartet in E minor a nervous work, unsettled in its procedures and unsettling
to audiences. But the wonder is
that — despite these many original strokes — this music is so
unified, so convincing, and at times so achingly beautiful. Simple verbal description cannot begin
to provide a measure of this music, but a general description can at least aid
a listener along his way to discovering this music for himself. The two chords that open the Allegro will recur throughout, at quite different dynamic levels and used in quite
different ways. The ÒthemeÓ that
follows seems almost a fragment, and Beethoven develops small parts even of
this theme, using them as rhythmic figures or developing intervals from this
opening statement. This is a big
movement, and Beethoven asks for repeats of both the exposition and development
(not always observed in performance) before the movement closes on a massive
restatement of the opening theme which suddenly fades into silence.
BeethovenÕs friend Carl Czerny said
that the composer had been inspired to write the Molto Adagio Òwhen
contemplating the starry sky and thinking of the music of the spheres.Ó Beethoven specifies in the score that
ÒThis piece must be played with great feeling,Ó and after the somewhat nervous
first movement the Adagio brings a world of expressive intensity. This massive movement, in sonata form,
opens with a prayer‑like main theme, but all is not peace: along the way
Beethoven punctuates the generally hushed mood with powerful massed chords.
The Allegretto, with its skittering
main theme (the pulses are off the beat), feels somewhat playful. In its trio section, Beethoven
introduces RazumovskyÕs ÒRussianÓ theme and then proceeds to subject it to such
strait‑jacketed contrapuntal treatment that some critics have felt that
Beethoven is trying annihilate the theme; Joseph Kerman speaks of the trio as
BeethovenÕs ÒrevengeÓ on Razumovsky.
The finale begins in the wrong key (C major) and then wobbles
uncertainly between C major and E minor throughout. Despite the air of high‑spirited dancing in the main
theme, this movement too brings stuttering phrases and the treatment of bits of
theme, which are sometimes tossed rapidly between the four voices. A Piu Presto coda brings this most
original quartet to a sudden close.
—Eric Bromberger
*******
THE
ALEXANDER STRING QUARTET Biography
Zakarias
Grafilo, violin ¥ Frederick Lifsitz, violin ¥ Paul Yarbrough, viola ¥
Sandy Wilson, cello
Having celebrated its 25th
Anniversary in 2006,