Out of Our Minds Chamber Music 2021-2022
Concert I: Saturday, September 25, 2021 @ 7:30 PM
Ensemble Druzhba (violinist Michelle Lee, violist Busya Lugovier, cellist Derek Clark) and pianist Mary Ellen Haupert
Dvořák: Piano Trio No. 4, Op. 90 "Dumky"
Brahms: Piano Quartet No. 1 in G Minor, Op. 25
Concert II: Saturday, November 20, 2021 @ 7:30 PM
Two Sisters Trio (violinist Kristina Gullion, cellist Monika Sutherland, and pianist Mary Ellen Haupert), pianist Meredith Mihm, and baritone James Wilson
Franck: Prelude, Fugue, and Variation, Op. 18
Franck: Nocturne
Franck: Piano Trio Op. 1, No. 1 (I. Andante con moto)
Reicha: Piano Trio in E-flat Major, Op. 101, No. 1
Concert III: Sunday, February 13, 2022 @ 3:00 PM
Two Sisters Trio (violinist Kristina Gullion, cellist Monika Sutherland, and pianist Mary Ellen Haupert) and violinist Nancy Oliveros
Farrenc: Violin Sonata No. 2 in A Major, Op. 39
Reicha: Piano Trio in D Minor, Op. 101, No. 2
Concert IV: Monday, April 25, 2022 @ 7:30 PM
Two Sisters Trio (violinist Kristina Gullion, cellist Monika Sutherland, and pianist Mary Ellen Haupert) and soprano Ann Schoenecker
Liszt: Selected Songs
Reicha: Piano Trio in C Major, Op. 101, No. 3
Ensemble Druzhba (violinist Michelle Lee, violist Busya Lugovier, cellist Derek Clark) and pianist Mary Ellen Haupert
Dvořák: Piano Trio No. 4, Op. 90 "Dumky"
Brahms: Piano Quartet No. 1 in G Minor, Op. 25
Concert II: Saturday, November 20, 2021 @ 7:30 PM
Two Sisters Trio (violinist Kristina Gullion, cellist Monika Sutherland, and pianist Mary Ellen Haupert), pianist Meredith Mihm, and baritone James Wilson
Franck: Prelude, Fugue, and Variation, Op. 18
Franck: Nocturne
Franck: Piano Trio Op. 1, No. 1 (I. Andante con moto)
Reicha: Piano Trio in E-flat Major, Op. 101, No. 1
Concert III: Sunday, February 13, 2022 @ 3:00 PM
Two Sisters Trio (violinist Kristina Gullion, cellist Monika Sutherland, and pianist Mary Ellen Haupert) and violinist Nancy Oliveros
Farrenc: Violin Sonata No. 2 in A Major, Op. 39
Reicha: Piano Trio in D Minor, Op. 101, No. 2
Concert IV: Monday, April 25, 2022 @ 7:30 PM
Two Sisters Trio (violinist Kristina Gullion, cellist Monika Sutherland, and pianist Mary Ellen Haupert) and soprano Ann Schoenecker
Liszt: Selected Songs
Reicha: Piano Trio in C Major, Op. 101, No. 3
Viterbo University Music Department Presents
Out-of-Our-Minds Chamber Music Series
February 21, 2021
Michelle Lee Eliott, violin
Busya Lugovier, viola
Derek Clark, cello
Mary Ellen Haupert, piano
ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES
Ensemble Druzhba: https://www.ensembledruzhba.com/
PROGRAM
Piano Quartet in G Minor, Op. 25 by Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
I. Allegro
II. Intermezzo: Allegro ma non troppo - Trio: Animato
III. Andante con moto
IV. Rondo all Zingarese: Presto
NOTES
Piano Quartet no. 1 in G minor, op. 25 was composed between 1856 and 1861 and published in 1863. It was dedicated to Baron R. von Dalwigk. The first performance was in Hamburg, with Clara Schumann at the piano. In 1862, the twenty-nine-year-old composer and pianist Johannes Brahms settled in Vienna, the capital of the western musical world. He introduced himself to that city’s musical elite with his Piano Quartet in G minor, the first of his eventual three. Members of the Hellmesberger Quartet, one of Vienna’s leading chamber ensembles, read the work with the composer at the piano; at its conclusion, the violinist Joseph Hellmesberger leapt from his chair, enthusiastically proclaiming, “This is the heir of Beethoven!”
The Quartet documents Brahms’s early maturity, in which, nearing his thirtieth birthday, the composer was able to fully assimilate the influences of Bach, Beethoven, and Schubert into a fully formed compositional voice. This period featured a generous trove of outstanding chamber works: two String Sextets, Opp. 18 and 36; the Opus 34 Piano Quintet; the Opus 38 Cello Sonata; the Opus 40 Horn Trio; and the first two Piano Quartets, Opp. 25 and 26. (Indeed, Brahms would not produce his first symphony until 1876, explaining, when pressed, “You have no idea how it feels to hear behind you the footsteps of a giant like Beethoven!”)
Opus 25 is best known for its rousing finale, the famous Rondo alla Zingarese (Gypsy Rondo). The movement’s irresistible refrain, reflective of Brahms’s lifelong fascination with Hungarian folk music, moreover, reveals the hand of a master tunesmith, able to dash off a hit with ease. Yet from its opening breath, the Quartet demonstrates extraordinary craft—worthy, indeed, of the mantle of Beethoven, the composer who built his terrifying Fifth Symphony from four innocuous notes. The G-minor Piano Quartet begins with a four-note fragment, presented by the piano in skeletal octaves—followed by a similar four notes, inverted (upside-down); then the inverted fragment again, transposed down a fourth; then a final time, but with the second and third notes voiced as a chord. In Beethovenian fashion, the sighing half-step gesture that closes each of these successive fragments serves as a generative cell as the movement takes shape. Indeed, a close listen to each of the Quartet’s four movements implicates this half-step throughout the whole of the work. It defines the melodic contour of the Intermezzo’s opening melody: a statement of quiet strength, voiced in muted strings, piano, dolce ed espressivo. The theme that begins the ravishing Andante con moto, like a Baroque ornament in slow motion, wreathes around an ascending half-step. On arriving at the Rondo alla Zingarese, the astute ear will detect, not only the seminal half-step, but the longer four-note gesture that began the Quartet. So does Brahms’s most viscerally seductive music prove to likewise be the fruit of his most cerebral scheme. This tour de force of a final movement, rich with ear candy (including a piano cadenza, evocative of the cimbalom), charts no less an emotional journey than the Quartet at large—announcing, truly, Beethoven’s heir, but also a unique and powerful musical voice in its own right. —© 2019 Patrick Castillo
Out-of-Our-Minds Chamber Music Series
February 21, 2021
Michelle Lee Eliott, violin
Busya Lugovier, viola
Derek Clark, cello
Mary Ellen Haupert, piano
ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES
Ensemble Druzhba: https://www.ensembledruzhba.com/
PROGRAM
Piano Quartet in G Minor, Op. 25 by Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
I. Allegro
II. Intermezzo: Allegro ma non troppo - Trio: Animato
III. Andante con moto
IV. Rondo all Zingarese: Presto
NOTES
Piano Quartet no. 1 in G minor, op. 25 was composed between 1856 and 1861 and published in 1863. It was dedicated to Baron R. von Dalwigk. The first performance was in Hamburg, with Clara Schumann at the piano. In 1862, the twenty-nine-year-old composer and pianist Johannes Brahms settled in Vienna, the capital of the western musical world. He introduced himself to that city’s musical elite with his Piano Quartet in G minor, the first of his eventual three. Members of the Hellmesberger Quartet, one of Vienna’s leading chamber ensembles, read the work with the composer at the piano; at its conclusion, the violinist Joseph Hellmesberger leapt from his chair, enthusiastically proclaiming, “This is the heir of Beethoven!”
The Quartet documents Brahms’s early maturity, in which, nearing his thirtieth birthday, the composer was able to fully assimilate the influences of Bach, Beethoven, and Schubert into a fully formed compositional voice. This period featured a generous trove of outstanding chamber works: two String Sextets, Opp. 18 and 36; the Opus 34 Piano Quintet; the Opus 38 Cello Sonata; the Opus 40 Horn Trio; and the first two Piano Quartets, Opp. 25 and 26. (Indeed, Brahms would not produce his first symphony until 1876, explaining, when pressed, “You have no idea how it feels to hear behind you the footsteps of a giant like Beethoven!”)
Opus 25 is best known for its rousing finale, the famous Rondo alla Zingarese (Gypsy Rondo). The movement’s irresistible refrain, reflective of Brahms’s lifelong fascination with Hungarian folk music, moreover, reveals the hand of a master tunesmith, able to dash off a hit with ease. Yet from its opening breath, the Quartet demonstrates extraordinary craft—worthy, indeed, of the mantle of Beethoven, the composer who built his terrifying Fifth Symphony from four innocuous notes. The G-minor Piano Quartet begins with a four-note fragment, presented by the piano in skeletal octaves—followed by a similar four notes, inverted (upside-down); then the inverted fragment again, transposed down a fourth; then a final time, but with the second and third notes voiced as a chord. In Beethovenian fashion, the sighing half-step gesture that closes each of these successive fragments serves as a generative cell as the movement takes shape. Indeed, a close listen to each of the Quartet’s four movements implicates this half-step throughout the whole of the work. It defines the melodic contour of the Intermezzo’s opening melody: a statement of quiet strength, voiced in muted strings, piano, dolce ed espressivo. The theme that begins the ravishing Andante con moto, like a Baroque ornament in slow motion, wreathes around an ascending half-step. On arriving at the Rondo alla Zingarese, the astute ear will detect, not only the seminal half-step, but the longer four-note gesture that began the Quartet. So does Brahms’s most viscerally seductive music prove to likewise be the fruit of his most cerebral scheme. This tour de force of a final movement, rich with ear candy (including a piano cadenza, evocative of the cimbalom), charts no less an emotional journey than the Quartet at large—announcing, truly, Beethoven’s heir, but also a unique and powerful musical voice in its own right. —© 2019 Patrick Castillo
