CHAMBER MUSIC FESTIVAL AND INSTITUTE

CHAMBER MUSIC FESTIVAL AND INSTITUTE

Benefit Concert & Reception2009 CHAMBER MUSIC INSTITUTE

Thursday, February 5, 2009, 7:00 pmMartin Family Hall, Menlo School50 Valparaiso Avenue, Atherton

FeaTuring

Chamber Music institute alumniTien-Hsin Cindy Wu, violin Youming Chen, vioa Dmitri Atapine, cello Gloria Chien, piano Hilda Huang, piano with

Wu Han, piano

P rog r a MFranz Schubert: Lebensstürme, op. 144, D. 947, for Piano, Four Hands (1828) Gloria Chien, Wu Han

Francis Poulenc: Sonata for Piano, Four Hands, op. 8 (1918, rev. 1939) I. Prelude II. Rustique III. FinalHilda Huang, Gloria Chien

gabriel Fauré: Piano Quartet no. 2 in g minor, op. 45 (?1885–86) I. Allegro molto moderato II. Allegro molto III. Adagio non troppo IV. Allegro moltoTien-Hsin Cindy Wu, Youming Chen, Dmitri Atapine, Gloria Chien

The program will be followed by a preview of the 2009 festival season and a reception with the artists in Stent Family Hall.

forceful a minor chords that announce the first theme immediately place the listener in the eye of the storm; the subsequent tune is soft but menacing. The sublime sec-ond theme emerges in impossibly quiet hymn-like chords (marked pianississimo) before unfolding into a heart-breaking lied, set in the miraculously distant Neapolitan key of A-flat major. Even amidst this peaceful respite from the Sturm und Drang of the first theme, one thinks of the question Schubert purportedly asked: “Is there any music that is not sad?”

Francis Poulenc (b. Paris, Jan 7, 1899; d. Paris, Jan 30, 1963)Sonata for Piano, Four Hands, op. 8 (1918, rev. 1939)

From the onset of the First World War into the 1920s, Paris became, more than ever before, an international hotbed of cultural activity. Gertrude Stein’s salon frequently hosted fellow American expatriates Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, and Thornton Wilder. Picasso kept a home in Montparnasse, where he fraternized with the poet Guil-laume Apollinaire, among others. Composers from across Europe and the United States, including Prokofiev, Arthur Bliss, and Aaron Copland, likewise flocked to Paris.

Wagner’s influence steadily evaporated and gave way to a wild new potpourri of musical styles. In 1920, France became the adoptive home of the thirty-eight-year-old Igor Stravinsky, whose Rite of Spring had set Paris on fire seven years earlier. Stravinsky’s newly cultivated neoclas-sical style became a great influence on a group of rising young composers known as Les Six: Georges Auric, Louis Durey, Arthur Honegger, Francis Poulenc, Germaine Tailleferre, and Darius Milhaud. These six initially came together in 1917 in support of the composer Erik Satie, who had come under fire for his ballet Parade. Based on a book by Jean Cocteau and featuring cubist décor designed by Picasso, Parade was an exceedingly modern production for its time and scandalized Paris. The iconoclastic Satie mentored Les Six as the young firebrand composers steadily conquered Parisian musical life. Although Satie remained the subject of much public indignation among French audiences, his protégés would become modernist

Franz Schubert (b. Vienna, Jan 31, 1797; d. Vienna, Nov 19, 1828)Allegro in a minor, Lebensstürme, D. 947, for Piano, Four Hands (1828)

Despite great physical suffering and psychic anguish at the end of his life, Schubert did not go quietly. His final year was staggeringly productive. Between mid-1827 and November 1828, Schubert completed the Piano Trio in B-flat Major, op. 99, and the Piano Trio in E-flat Major, op. 100; the Fantasy in C Major for Violin and Piano; the “Great” Symphony; the Cello Quintet; more than two dozen songs, including the presciently titled Schwanenge-sang (Swan Song); and the last three piano sonatas, in addition to numerous other piano, vocal, and orchestral works—all told, an imposing set of masterpieces, miracu-lously concentrated within a deeply trying twelve months or so, unequaled by many composers over entire lifetimes. For generations of music lovers since Schubert’s death, these late works have provoked torturous thoughts of what might have been had the composer lived past age thirty-one: they suggest the discovery of a new artistic direction, analogous to Beethoven’s notorious “new path” toward his imposing “heroic” period.

The first half of 1828 also yielded three marvelous works for four-hand piano, a genre generously cultivated by Schubert throughout his career: the Fantasy in f minor, D. 940 (composed January–April); the Allegro in a minor, Lebensstürme, D. 947 (May); and the Rondo in A Major, D. 951 (June). Schubert scholar Christopher H. Gibbs sur-mises that these three works “serve as additional proof of Schubert’s quest to transcend the confines of the salon,” adding that “Schubert’s music for piano duet is among not only his greatest but also his most original.”

Like many of Schubert’s works, the single-movement, sonata-form Allegro in a minor was not published until after the composer’s death; upon publication in 1840, it was assigned an opus number (op. 144) and the title Lebensstürme—the storms of life. The title is an apt desig-nation, not only for the deep anxiety that vexed Schubert’s final year but for the music’s inclement character. The

Progr aM n oT eS

darlings of 1920s Paris. Honegger and Milhaud enjoyed the highest public and critical acclaim; Poulenc was widely regarded as an amateur, capable of writing only lighter, comic fair, but recent history has come to rediscover and appreciate Poulenc as the most original voice of Les Six.

Poulenc strove to integrate Western classical music with popular styles including jazz, vaudeville, cabaret, and even circus music. His music reflects this ideal in its devilish stylishness. The Opus 8 Sonata for Four-Hand Piano is a youthful work, both chronologically (composed in 1918, when Poulenc was not yet twenty, and then revised in 1939) and in its zestful flair. (Poulenc would later return to music for two pianists, composing the Opus 156 Sonata in 1952–53 and Opus 175 Elégie in 1959, each requiring two pianos, and the Opus 61 Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra in 1932—thus extending a tradition that so captivated Mozart and Schubert before him.) The Sonata’s three short movements—labeled Prelude, Rustique, and Final—bring together invigorating ostinato figures, exotic harmonies, and popular-sounding tunes. Poulenc’s own assessment of the musical character he shared with his compatriots is especially apt for this particular work: “You will find sobriety and dolor in French music just as in German and Russian. But the French have a keener sense of proportion. We realize that somberness and good humor are not mutually exclusive. Our compos-ers, too, write profound music, but when they do, it is leavened with that lightness of spirit without which life would be unendurable.”

gabriel Fauré (b. Pamiers, Ariège, May 12, 1845; d. Paris, Nov 4, 1924)Piano Quartet no. 2 in g minor, op. 45 (?1885–86)

Fauré’s Second Piano Quartet represents a manifold enigma for chamber music audiences. Contrary to the composer’s reputation as a miniaturist of characteristic (and characteristically French) elegance, the quartet’s rhetorical power places it toe to toe with the robust piano quartets of the German Romantics, such as the three by Brahms. It has inexplicably failed to achieve the same popularity as its elder sibling, the Piano Quartet in

c minor, op. 15, even though, as Opus 45 devotees will attest, the masterfully wrought Second Quartet is at least the c minor’s equal. Leading French music scholar Robert Orledge has specifically lauded the g minor’s “significant advance on the First Quartet in the force of its expression [and] the increased rhythmic drive and complexity of its themes.”

The Second Quartet moreover remains enigmatic for how little we know surrounding its creation. Fauré likely com-posed the work between 1885 and 1886 and played the piano part himself at its premiere on January 22, 1887, at a concert presented in Paris by the Société Nationale de Musique Française. (Another performance of note came on November 9, 1891, in London, involving the virtuosic Belgian violinist-composer Eugène Ysaÿe.) The score bears a dedication to the German pianist and conductor Hans von Bülow. Otherwise, almost nothing is known of the quartet’s circumstances.

Nevertheless, the work does make evident that Fauré’s keyboard prowess matched his compositional imagina-tion: the muscular piano part, realized by the composer at the premiere, requires strength and sensitivity in equal measures. For much of the work, Fauré weights the ensemble unevenly, with the piano single-handedly coun-terbalancing the trio of strings rather than taking part as one of four equal voices. This dynamic propels the work immediately from the start of the first movement: over a turbulent piano accompaniment, violin, viola, and cello in unison introduce the impassioned theme.

Much of the movement’s subsequent material derives from the physiognomy of this opening melody. A thought-ful utterance by the viola heralds a change in complexion; Fauré fashions a gentler and more tender music which soon progresses to the ethereal, high register of the vio-lin. Following a tranquil recitative in the viola and cello, punctuated by quietly rolled chords in the piano, the violin further transfigures the theme, pianissimo, dolcissimo. The viola, assuming further significance in the movement’s narrative structure, emerges from this transfiguration cryptically hemming and hawing; the movement passes into the development section, a harmonically rich mosaic

of fragments of earlier material. The arrival at the reca-pitulation is forceful and abrupt.

The quartet’s fiendish pianism continues in the scherzo. The left hand’s frenetic eighth-note accompaniment, accentuated by forceful pizzicati, provides a propulsive backdrop for the mischievously syncopated melody in the right hand. The strings, in unison, introduce their own musical idea, painted in broad strokes and superimpos-ing 3/4 time onto the established 6/8 meter. The piano comments with increasingly chromatic iterations of its own melody. As the scherzo progresses, the music seems precariously on the verge of eruption at any moment, but Fauré allows no such indulgence; instead, his sure-handed restraint only stokes further disquiet.

The piano introduction to the Adagio extends the scher-zo’s metric ambiguity, as Fauré divides the movement’s 9/8 meter—a time signature typically treated as nine small beats grouped into three big beats (1-2-3, 2-2-3, 3-2-3)—into uneven groups of two (1-2, 2-2…). Fauré apparently designed this passage to evoke church bells that he heard as a child in the village of Cadirac. The viola again assumes a prominent role, answering the piano undulations with fitting simplicity. The composer lov-ingly instructs the viola: piano, dolce, espressivo, senza rigor. The dialogue between these two musical ideas—or, per-haps not dialogue, but the poignant detachment of two estranged monologues—provides the blueprint for the rest of the movement. (Aaron Copland remarked that this slow movement’s “beauty is truly classic if we define clas-sicism as intensity on a background of calm.”)

The finale answers the Adagio with a return to the first movement’s furious energy. Fauré even ups the ante for the fourth movement (Allegro molto), but his economy and concision of thematic material hold the wagon firmly intact through the tempestuous journey. The movement never relents; indeed, the composer saves the coup de grâce for the exuberantly triumphant coda.

—© 2009 Patrick Castillo

Dmitri atapine, cello Cellist Dmitri Atapine, the First Prize winner at the 2004 Carlos Pri-eto International Cello Competition (Mexico), is recognized as an exciting performer and an accomplished chamber musician. A regular soloist and recitalist, he has

appeared on some of the world’s most coveted stages, including Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall, the National Auditorium of Spain, and Prince Philip Auditorium in Asturias, among others. He has performed as a soloist with the Asturias Symphony Orchestra, León Symphony Orchestra, Gijón Chamber Orchestra, Yale Philharmonia Orchestra, and the Michigan State University Symphony and Philharmonic orchestras. He has also appeared at numerous festivals, including Music@Menlo, Banff, Great Mountains International Chamber Music Festival in South Korea, Miguel Bernal Jiménez Festival in Mexico, the French Academy in Rome, and the Pacific Music Fes-tival in Japan. Since 2007 he has served as Artistic Director of the International Music Festival of Ribadesella in Spain. He has also collaborated with eminent artists such as Simon Carrington and the Tokyo String Quartet.

Dmitri Atapine’s multiple awards include First Prize (String Quartet) and Second Prize (with pianist Hye-Yeon Park) at the 2008 New England International Chamber Competition, Grand Prize at the 2007 Plowman Chamber Music Competition as a founding member of the Alianza String Quartet, the 2005 Presser Foundation Award, First Prize and Asturias Symphony Special Prize at the 2003 Villa de Llanes International String Competition (Spain), winner of the Woolsey Hall Competition at Yale Univer-sity, and First Prize at the Villa de Sahagún International Music Competition at age thirteen.

Dmitri Atapine began his musical education at the age of five at the St. Petersburg Conservatory School of Music.

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Since 1992, he has resided in Spain, where he gradu-ated with honors from the Asturias Conservatory under Alexander Fedortchenko. After receiving his bachelor’s and master’s degrees with high honors in 2002 and 2003 from Michigan State University under the tutelage of Suren Bagratuni, he continued his studies with the leg-endary Aldo Parisot at the Yale School of Music, where he completed a master’s of musical arts degree in 2005 and obtained an Artist Diploma in 2006.

Youming Chen, violaViolist Youming Chen is an active recitalist, chamber musician, and orchestral musi-cian. He has appeared in Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, the Royal Albert Hall, Avery Fisher Hall, and Merkin Concert Hall. As winner of

the Rutgers Symphony Orchestra concerto competi-tion, he performed the revised edition of Bartók’s Viola Concerto with Rossen Milanov. He was featured on the WQXR Young Artist Showcase radio program in New York. He has participated in festivals such as the Pacific Music Festival ( Japan), the Aspen Music Festival, Prussia Cove (England), and Music@Menlo. He has been a violist of the Gustave Rosseels Quartet and was a founding mem-ber of the Fader Piano Quartet, with whom he won the Saunderson Award at the fifty-eighth Coleman Chamber Ensemble Competition. The Fader Quartet was also invited to play as musical guest in the Rainbow Room at NBC Studios and at the American Irish Historical Soci-ety in New York.

Among his orchestral appearances, Youming Chen has collaborated with Sir Colin Davis in the Proms at the Royal Albert Hall as Principal Violist. Chen also served as Principal Violist for the Centennial Tour of the Juilliard Orchestra with James DePreist, performing in Lucerne,

Berlin, Helsinki, Aldeburgh, and London. He performed as Assistant Principal with the Flint Symphony Orches-tra and as Guest Principal for the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra.

Youming Chen studies with Paul Neubauer. He received a master’s degree from the Juilliard School and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan. His teachers have included Hsin-Yun Huang, Toby Appel, Yizhak Schot-ten, Victoria Chiang, and Alan de Veritch.

gloria Chien, piano Selected by the Boston Globe as one of the “superior pianists of the year” and praised by Richard Dyer for “a wondrously rich pal-ette of colors, which she mixes with dash-ing bravado and with an uncanny precision of calibration,” pianist

Gloria Chien made her orchestral debut at the age of sixteen with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Since then, she has appeared as a soloist under the batons of Sergiu Comissiona, Keith Lockhart, and Thomas Dausgaard. She has presented solo recitals at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Sanibel Musical Festival, Caramoor Musical Festival, Salle Cortot in Paris, and the National Concert Hall in Taiwan. Gloria Chien has participated in such festi-vals as the Music Academy of the West, the Verbier Music Festival, and Music@Menlo.

An avid chamber musician, Gloria Chien has been the resident pianist with the Chameleon Arts Ensemble of Boston since 2000. Her recent CD featuring music of Grazyna Bacewicz received fantastic reviews in Gramophone, The Strad, and American Record Guide. The International Record Review writes, “[the violinist] could ask for no more sensitive or supportive an accompanist than Gloria Chien…exquisitely attentive.”

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Her recent performances include collaborations with the Daedalus String Quartet, James Buswell, Marc Johnson, Paul Neubauer, Andrés Díaz, Soovin Kim, Carolin Wid-mann, and Anthony McGill. In the fall of 2004, Gloria Chien was named Assistant Professor of Music at Lee University in Cleveland, Tennessee. Her teachers have included Russell Sherman and Wha Kyung Byun.

hilda huang, pianoHilda Huang is a piano student of John McCarthy’s and studies harpsichord with Corey Jamason in the Preparatory Division at the San Francisco Conserva-tory of Music. For the past three summers, she has been a student

in Music@Menlo’s Chamber Music Institute in California and has received coaching from Gary Graffman, Wu Han, and Gilbert Kalish. She has also participated in master classes with David Finckel and Barbara Nissman. Hilda Huang has performed in Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall over the past two seasons as the First Prize winner of the Bradshaw & Buono International Piano Competition. She also received First Prize in the 2006 San Francisco Chopin Competition. She has appeared as soloist at the Carmel Bach Festival in California. Hilda Huang has performed on From the Top at Carnegie Hall on PBS and From the Top on NPR. She was also invited to perform in the annual Young Artists Concert of the Steinway Society of the Bay Area as part of its concert series.

Hilda Huang was named a 2008 Davidson Fellow by the Davidson Institute for Talent Development and received her award at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Last October, she made her concerto debut with the Cincinnati Pops under Erich Kunzel, also making her first international recording with Telarc. Last December, she

participated in a Bach documentary by Michael Lawrence Films with violinists Joshua Bell and Hilary Hahn, the Emerson String Quartet, Bach scholar Christoph Wolff, and composer Philip Glass.

Tien-hsin Cindy Wu, violinViolinist Tien-Hsin Cindy Wu has per-formed with notable musicians and ensem-bles in Europe, the United States, and Asia. She has performed as a soloist with the National Symphony Orchestra of Taiwan and Taipei Symphony

Orchestra in her native country, as well as with the Odessa Philharmonic Orchestra (Ukraine) and the Russian State Symphony Orchestra. Also an experienced chamber musi-cian, Tien-Hsin Wu has performed throughout Taiwan and in the United States at New York City’s Alice Tully Hall, Boston’s Jordan Hall, and Washington, D.C.’s Kennedy Center and Library of Congress, as well as in Philadelphia, Baltimore, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. She has col-laborated with artists such as Toby Appel, Gary Graffman, Gary Hoffman, Nobuko Imai, Ani Kavafian, Ida Kavafian, William Preucil, Thomas Quasthoff, Julian Rachlin, Niko-laj Znaider, and members of the Alban Berg, Guarneri, Miami, Orion, and Tokyo string quartets.

Tien-Hsin Wu’s many honors and awards include the gold medal in the eighteenth Stulberg International String Competition, Third Prize in the David Oistrakh International Violin Competition, a Chi Mei Young Artist Scholarship, and Grand Prize in the Young Artist Showcase Competition organized by Philharmonic Radio Taipei. She has appeared as a guest on NPR’s From the Top and has frequently been interviewed by Philharmonic Radio Taipei and IC Broadcasting of Taiwan. In past summers, she has attended the Marlboro Music Festival, Music from Angel

Fire, Music@Menlo, the Verbier Festival and Academy, the Aspen Music Festival, and the ENCORE School for Strings, where she serves as a chamber music coach.

In 2008, Tien-Hsin Wu was awarded a scholarship from the Dorothy Richard Starling Foundation for graduate studies with Midori Goto at the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California. Previous teachers include Ida Kavafian and Victor Danchenko at the Curtis Institute of Music and Dorothy DeLay and Hyo Kang at the Juilliard School. In addition to the violin, she studied the viola with Steven Tenenbom.

Wu han, pianoPianist Wu Han ranks among the most esteemed and influential classical musicians in the world today. Her career has taken her to many of the world’s most prestigious venues, including Lincoln Center, Carnegie

Hall, and Washington’s Kennedy Center. She has toured North and South America, Europe, and the Far East, and her regular summer festival appearances include Aspen, Santa Fe, Chamber Music Northwest, Caramoor, and Music@Menlo. Wu Han is active as a concerto soloist, as well, recently appearing with the Los Angeles Cham-ber Orchestra in a performance of the Beethoven Triple Concerto. Wu Han is a frequent collaborator with many of today’s finest musicians and ensembles, including the Borromeo, Emerson, Pacifica, and St. Lawrence string quartets.

With cellist David Finckel, Wu Han performs extensively across the United States and Europe to unanimous critical acclaim. Last season, the duo gave the world premiere of Pierre Jalbert’s Cello Sonata at the Aspen

Music Festival, and this season they will be giving the world premiere of a new work for cello and piano by award-winning composer George Tsontakis. During the 2006–07 season, Wu Han and David Finckel made their recital debut at the Morgan Library & Museum’s new Gilder Lehrman Hall in New York, where they returned to perform in 2007–08.

Wu Han’s wide-ranging musical activities include the founding of ArtistLed, classical music’s first musician-directed, Internet-based recording company, which, in 2007, celebrated its tenth year. All eleven ArtistLed recordings have received critical acclaim and are avail-able via the company’s Web site (www.ArtistLed.com). ArtistLed’s recent release Russian Recital features works by Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, and Scriabin and marks Wu Han’s first full-length solo recording for the label. This season, ArtistLed released its eleventh album, a recording of the Schubert piano trios, featuring David Finckel, Wu Han, and violinist Philip Setzer.

Wu Han and David Finckel serve as Artistic Directors of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. In recent years, they have become widely recognized for their initiatives in expanding audiences for classical music and for guiding the careers of countless young musi-cians. They are the founders and Artistic Directors of Music@Menlo, a chamber music festival in Silicon Valley. Prior to launching Music@Menlo, Wu Han and David Finckel served for three seasons as Artistic Directors of La Jolla SummerFest.

Music@Menlo is an internationally acclaimed chamber music festival and institute under the artistic direction of cellist David Finckel and pia-nist Wu Han. Based at Menlo School in Atherton, California, and an important part of the San Francisco Bay Area’s dynamic cultural fabric, Music@Menlo is noted for its world-class chamber music performances, extensive audience-engagement programs, intensive training for preprofessional musicians through its Chamber Music Institute, and efforts to enrich and cultivate the global chamber music community.

Music@Menlo’s Chamber Music instituteMusic@Menlo’s Chamber Music Institute, now entering its seventh year, offers an unparalleled opportunity for young musicians to hone their craft. The Institute offers daily interaction with world-renowned performing artists, multiple performance opportunities, and an engaging series of classes and lectures, complementing the festival’s beautiful location and nurturing environment. Students in the Institute’s two programs work directly with the festi-val’s esteemed faculty of artists and educators and engage in a wide array of activities. The International Program serves highly motivated artists at the dawn of their pro-fessional careers with an extensive schedule of rehearsals and master classes that culminate in several performance opportunities, including the festival’s popular and free Pre-lude Performance series and collaborations with leading musicologists in the festival’s Encounter series. The Young

Performers Program is designed for gifted musicians ages nine to eighteen at the preconservatory level seeking to develop their musicianship through intensive training. A daily schedule of rehearsals and coachings with the artist-faculty culminates in the festival’s signa-ture series of Koret Young Performers Concerts.

ann S. bowers Young artist FundMusic@Menlo is committed to making study in the Chamber Music Institute accessible to young artists who could not attend without scholarship support. Since the program’s inception, all participants accepted into the Chamber Music Institute who have needed assistance have received it. In 2008, all International Program par-ticipants received full-tuition fellowships and all Young Performers Program participants who applied for merit scholarship or financial aid consideration were awarded full or partial financial assistance. Decisions to accept students into the program are made independently of students’ financial need.

Music@Menlo 2009 FestivalSave the dates: July 17–August 8, 2009

Music@Menlo 50 Valparaiso Avenue, Atherton, CA 94027650-330-2030 / www.musicatmenlo.org

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