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October 18, 2009 – David Chan, violin; Jeewon Park, piano, Rafael Figueroa, cello JOHANNES BRAHMS (1833-1897) Trio in B Major, Op. 8, for violin, cello, and piano October 18, 2009 – David Chan, violin; Jeewon Park, piano, Rafael Figueroa, cello Johannes Brahms’ Piano Trio, Opus 8, is in many respects a paradoxical work. Progressing from a radiant B major to a tragic B minor, the piece juxtaposes passages of luxurious warmth and optimism and music of turbulence and despair. It is also, in the version heard most often today, simultaneously one of Brahms’ earliest and latest works. He had already started composing the trio in 1853, when the great Hungarian violinist Joseph Joachim gave the 20-year-old Brahms a letter of introduction to Robert and Clara Schumann. Brahms’ meeting with the Schumanns at their Düsseldorf home marked an important turning point in his life and career. The Schumanns received him with enormous enthusiasm and generosity. They invited him to stay with them for several weeks, initiating a close friendship that would last for the rest of their lives. Schumann wrote glowingly about the younger composer in his influential journal The New Leipzig Musical Times, and he introduced Brahms to the head of the prominent music publishing firm Breitkopf & Härtel. This greatly enhanced Brahms’ prospects for a successful composing career. The following February, while still working on the trio, Brahms received the distressing news of Robert Schumann’s suicide attempt. He hastened back to Düsseldorf to comfort the Schumann family. It was under those dark circumstances that he completed the piece later that year. Perhaps this brush with tragedy associated with his mentor altered the emotional trajectory of the work, diverting it from its luminous B-major beginning and setting on the course towards its stormy B-minor conclusion. Toward the end of his life Brahms, now the most respected of living composers, changed music publishers. Fritz Simrock bought the rights to all of Brahms’ works from Breitkopf & Härtel for the purpose of publishing them in a new edition. Simrock offered Brahms the opportunity to revise some of his earliest works for the release of the new edition. Brahms, ever the perfectionist – he had burned his first twenty string quartets and postponed composing his first symphony until his mid-40s – decided to revisit his 35-year-old trio, Op. 8. After performing the new version in 1890, Brahms wrote to a friend, saying, “Do you still remember the B major trio from our early days, and wouldn’t you be curious to hear it now, as I have (instead of placing a wig on it!) taken the hair and combed and ordered it a bit…?” This was quite an understatement. In fact, he had shortened the overall length of the work by a third, substantially rewriting the middle sections of the first, third, and fourth movements. Only the Scherzo remained essentially unchanged from its original version. The final work seamlessly blends the impetuosity and passion of his youth with the technical assurance and architectural mastery of his maturity. The first movement begins like a cello sonata, unleashing a glorious cello melody that continues for 23 measures before it is finally joined by the violin. The atmosphere of the movement is wise and reassuring, demonstrating that, even at an early age, his musical sensibilities were already well-formed and recognizably “Brahmsian.” The Scherzo begins in a stealthily portentous B minor. Compressed staccato phrases are interwoven with longer thematic threads that foreshadow surprises ahead. Sudden fortissimo outbursts crash through the texture, dissolving into delicate piano filigree and quiet passagework in the strings. The contrasting trio introduces a melody of expansive warmth and maturity. The third movement alternates between solemn piano and string chorales, eventually blending the two into a sustained, meditative texture. The music then gives way to a long-lined, soulful cello solo. The solemn chorale textures return toward the end of the movement, now accompanied by ethereal ornaments in the right hand of the piano. The final movement is a musical battle between hope and despair. A quietly agitated opening explodes into major-key passages of great exuberance and exultation. Finally, though, the music retreats back into agitation and concern, and the trio concludes in a burst of stormy, B-minor turbulence. By Michael Parloff Return to Parlance Program Notes

MARK ROMATZ, BASSOON Mark L. Romatz, bassoon, is currently Second Bassoon and Contrabassoon the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. Prior to that appointment, the University of Michigan graduate held positions with the Montreal, Jacksonville, Savannah, Duluth, and Flint Symphonies. He has been a member of the Bellingham, Grand Teton, Grant Park, Colorado, Spoleto, Lancaster, Sunflower, and Buzzard Bay Music Festivals. Mr. Romatz has been a faculty member at McGill University in Montreal, the University of Florida, St. Olaf College, and the University of Minnesota-Duluth. He as served as Acting Second Bassoon with the Minnesota Orchestra and has performed with the Chicago and Detroit Symphony Orchestras and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. He studies with L. Hugh Cooper and John Miller.

June 19, 2022 – Pinchas Zukerman, violin; Shai Wosner, piano LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770–1827) Violin Sonata No. 5 in F major, op. 24, “Spring” June 19, 2022 – Pinchas Zukerman, violin; Shai Wosner, piano This most famous of all Classical violin sonatas arose out of Beethoven’s impulse to write a contrasting pair in which the F major Sonata would serve as the more relaxed, genial resolution to its more intense companion. Thus he composed his A minor Violin Sonata in 1800 and immediately after, the present Spring Sonata, completed in 1801. He intended to publish both as Opus 23, but owing to a printer’s error in which the violin parts were engraved in different sizes, they were issued separately to save the expense of redoing one of the parts. Beethoven dedicated the pair to his patron Count Moritz von Fries, whose home had been the scene for the famous piano improvisation duel between Beethoven and Daniel Steibelt. Though Beethoven had composed in pairs before, these Violin Sonatas are the first of his famous companion pieces of such different character, one in the minor and one in the major, carried out most notably in his Fifth and Sixth Symphonies. The Spring Sonata’s F major key and its flowing, pastoral qualities, especially in its outer movements, are responsible for its nickname, which, however, did not arise with the composer. The first movement’s charming main theme, which has endeared the Sonata to millions, points up several notable features, the first of which is the rigorously impartial parceling out of themes and accompaniment between the two instruments—the violin plays the melody first with accompanimental piano figuration, then the roles are reversed, and this trading off occurs throughout the Sonata. This was not always the case in most eighteenth-century works in the genre, in which the keyboard was considered the primary player. Second, the very fact that there is a great deal of accompanimental figuration—for whichever instrument—is also particularly noticeable in this Sonata as compared to Beethoven’s earlier works. And finally, the technical challenges are not overwhelming for the players, which contributes to the easygoing quality—and to the remarkable number of amateur performances this Sonata has always attracted. The trading off continues in the slow movement, whose unhurried main theme receives florid bits of ornamentation as it returns in varied guises. Certain of these ornaments, fragmented interjections, and especially the repeated oscillations toward the close have suggested bird song to a number of listeners. The briefest of scherzos presents a playful theme that delights the ear as it sets the violin at rhythmic odds with the piano. Apparently fascinated by this theme, Schumann adapted it for the Soldier’s March in his Album for the Young. The busy scales of the trio lead to the short return of the main theme, which trails off delicately. As in the first movement Beethoven employs a lyrical main theme in his finale, here as a rondo refrain between contrasting episodes. One of the movement’s most unusual features is the return of this theme—elaborately set up—in a remote key before it elegantly rights itself. Toward the end he introduces a galloping variation on the theme, and continues to vary the ensuing sequence of ideas to make a conclusive finish. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

November 12, 2023: Angel Blue, soprano; Bryan Wagorn, piano GABRIEL FAURÉ (1845-1924) Mélodies November 12, 2023: Angel Blue, soprano; Bryan Wagorn, piano Fauré’s first work, “Le papillon et la fleur,” was a mélodie (song) composed in 1861 when he was a sixteen-year-old student at the École Niedermeyer. He continued to compose mélodies throughout his long life, penning his last set, L’horizon chimérique, in 1922. He progressed from writing primarily romances to working in a mature style—influenced by poet Paul Verlaine—beginning with the celebrated “Clair de lune,” and eventually focusing his attention on the song cycle and its many interconnections. Often considered the master of French song composers, Fauré left his mark on all who followed, including Debussy, Ravel, and Roussel. Fauré loved texts that permitted him to create a mood or set a scene rather than those that restricted him to illustrative details and he altered texts of lesser poets when it suited his purpose. Verlaine’s poetry drew a new style from him, a more continuous flow and more use of modality, though he still concentrated on atmosphere rather than on each textual nuance, as Debussy did at roughly the same time. Fauré’s first Verlaine setting, “Clair de lune” (1887), is subtitled “minuet,” the composer’s response to the eighteenth-century images in the text of elegant statues, parks, and masqueraders. Verlaine’s Mandoline, which describes eighteenth-century commedia dell’arte serenaders, was set by Fauré in 1891, having already attracted Debussy in 1882. Fauré permitted himself to repeat the opening verse to achieve a ternary form. His accompaniment figures suggest the plucked mandolin. In 1884, submerged beneath Fauré’s musically serene exterior, there lurked a certain violence, which erupted in “Fleur jetée.” One of Fauré’s most successful Silvestre settings, it recalls Schubert’s “Erlkönig” in its savage repeated octaves and blustering scales. The voice part is no less dramatic as the rejected lover implores the wind to dry up her broken heart. —©Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

February 20, 2022 – Paul Huang, violin; Danbi Um, violin; Juho Pohjonen, piano CHRIS ROGERSON Afterword for two violins and piano February 20, 2022 – Paul Huang, violin; Danbi Um, violin; Juho Pohjonen, piano Chris Rogerson began playing piano at the age of two (!) and cello at age eight, but he found his true calling as a composer. He studied at the Curtis Institute of Music, the Yale School of Music, and Princeton University with renowned composers Jennifer Higdon, Aaron Jay Kernis, Martin Bresnick, and Steve Mackey. Rogerson’s music, praised for its “haunting beauty” and “virtuosic exuberance” (New York Times) includes Of Simple Grace for Yo-Yo Ma, a book of Nocturnes written for ten different pianists from around the world, and works for the Atlanta, Houston, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, New Jersey, New World, and San Francisco symphonies, among others. The constant demand for Rogerson’s compositions has resulted most recently in a new piano concerto, commissioned by the Bravo! Vail Festival for Anne-Marie McDermott, and The Little Prince, a violin concerto for Benjamin Beilman commissioned by the Kansas City Symphony. Other premieres this season include Sacred Earth for mezzo-soprano J’Nai Bridges with video by National Geographic photographer Keith Ladzinski and two premieres with the Dover Quartet: Dream Sequence, a piano quintet also featuring Anne-Marie McDermott, and Arietta with bassist Edgar Meyer joining the quartet. As 2010–12 composer-in-residence for Young Concert Artists, Rogerson had works premiered in the YCA Series in New York at Merkin Concert Hall and at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. He served in the same capacity for the Amarillo Symphony, which commissioned and premiered six of his works, among them his Dolos Sielut (Ancient Souls, 2017) and Four Autumn Landscapes (2016), a clarinet concerto for New York Philharmonic principal clarinettist Anthony McGill. Rogerson has also held residencies at the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, and Copland House, and won the Jacob Druckman Prize as a Fellow at the Aspen Music Festival. Rogerson’s numerous honors include the 2012 Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, ASCAP’s Morton Gould Young Composer Award, and prizes from the National Foundation for the Advancement of the Arts and the National Association for Music Education. Rogerson co-founded Kettle Corn New Music in New York City in 2012 and serves as its artistic director. Since 2016 he has also been a faculty member at his Curtis, his undergraduate alma mater in Philadelphia, where he lives full-time. Afterword for two violins and piano was commissioned by the Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts and premiered in February 2020 by Danbi Um, Paul Huang, and Orion Weiss. Dedicated “to my great friend Jacob,” the piece owes its most ethereal sounds to a two-fold inspiration. Rogerson explains: “There is something noble, sweeping, and grand about looking back on life, reflecting on life’s triumphs, pains, joys, and mysteries. I composed this piece after Jessye Norman’s death, and listened to her sublime recording of Strauss’s autumnal Four Last Songs frequently. Strauss perfectly captures this feeling of contemplation, especially in the final song ‘Im Abendrot.’ In Afterword, I make subtle references to this song. “I also composed this piece while reading Hanya Yanagihara’s novel A Little Life, which is at its core a meditation on life’s sweetness and anguish. Without spoiling the novel, one of the characters experiences unimaginable pain. To me there is something particularly poignant about someone who reflects on a difficult life: the shortness of it, how cruel it can be, how ephemeral, how sweet.” © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

LUCILLE CHUNG, PIANO Born in Montréal, Canadian pianist Lucille Chung has been acclaimed for her “stylish and refined performances” by Gramophone magazine, “combining vigour and suppleness with natural eloquence and elegance” (Le Soir). She made her debut at the age of ten with the Montréal Symphony Orchestra and Charles Dutoit subsequently invited her to be a featured soloist during the MSO Asian Tour in 1989. Since then, she has performed an extensive concerto repertoire with over 70 leading orchestras such as the Philadelphia Orchestra, Moscow Virtuosi, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Flemish Radio Orchestra, Orquesta Sinfónica de Tenerífe, Orquesta Sinfónica de Bilbao, Staatskapelle Weimar, Philharmonie de Lorraine, Orchestra Sinfonica Siciliana, Belgrade Philharmonic, the Seoul Philharmonic, KBS Orchestra, New Jersey Symphony, Dallas Symphony, UNAM Philharmonic (Mexico), Israel Chamber Orchestra as well as all the major Canadian orchestras, including Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, National Arts Centre (Ottawa), Calgary, Winnipeg and Metropolitain, among others. She has appeared with conductors such as Krzysztof Penderecki, Vladimir Spivakov, Vasily Petrenko, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Peter Oundjian, Gerd Albrecht and Charles Dutoit. As a recitalist, she has performed in over 35 countries in prestigious venues such as the Wigmore Hall in London, New York’s Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center and Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., the Dame Myra Hess Series in Chicago, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Madrid’s Auditorio Nacional, the Great Hall of the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest, and the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels. Festival appearances include the Verbier Festival in Switzerland, MDR Sommer Festival in Dresden, Lübecker Kammermusikfest, Santander International Festival in Spain, Felicja Blumental Festival in Israel, Music@Menlo, Montreal International Festival, Ottawa Chamber Festival, Bard Music Festival in NY, International Keyboard Institute and Festival in NYC, ChangChun Festival in China, and the Bravissimo Festival in Guatemala. In 1989, she was recognized on the international scene as the First Prize winner at the Stravinsky International Piano Competition. She won Second Prize at the 1992 Montreal International Music Competition, at which she also won a Special Prize for the best interpretation of the unpublished work. In 1993, she received the Outstanding Achievement Award from the Governor General of Canada and in 1994 won the Second Prize at the First International Franz Liszt Competition in Weimar. In 1999, she was awarded the prestigious Virginia Parker Prize by the Canada Council for the Arts. She graduated from both the Curtis Institute of Music and the Juilliard School before she turned twenty. She decided to further her studies in London with Maria Curcio-Diamand, Schnabel’s protégée, at the “Mozarteum” in Salzburg with Karl-Heinz Kämmerling and received the Konzertexam Diplom from the Hochschule “Franz Liszt” in Weimar, where she worked with the late Lazar Berman. She also graduated from the Accademia Pianistica in Imola, Italy with the honorary title of “Master” and from Southern Methodist University under Joaquín Achúcarro where she is now a Johnson-Prothro Artist-in-Residence. Ms. Chung is the recipient of the prestigious Honors Diploma at the Accademia Chigiana in Siena, Italy. Lucille Chung has been hailed as “a considerable artist, admirable for her bold choice of music” by The Sunday Times for her recordings of the complete piano works by György Ligeti on the Dynamic label. The first volume was released in 2001 to great critical acclaim, receiving the maximum R10 from Classica-Répertoire in France, 5 Stars from the BBC Music Magazine, and 5 Stars on Fono Forum in Germany. The final volume, which also contains works for two pianos, was recorded with her husband, Alessio Bax and once again received the prestigious R10 from Classica-Répertoire. Her all-Scriabin CD won the “Best Instrumental Recording” prize at the 2003 Prelude Classical Awards in Holland as well as the coveted R10 from Classica-Répertoire in France. She also recorded the two Mendelssohn Piano Concerti on the Richelieu/Radio-Canada label, which was nominated for the Prix Opus in Canada. In August 2005, Bax and Chung recorded Saint-Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals with the Fort Worth Symphony under Maestro Miguel Harth-Bedoya, which was released in 2006. In 2007 she released a solo album for the Fazioli Concert Hall Series. Lucille then embarked on an exclusive contract with Disques XXI/Universal. So far, she has released two CDs, Piano Transcriptions of Camille Saint-Saëns and Mozart & Me. Both CDs continue earning critical praise and have been broadcast internationally. 2013 marked the release of a piano duo disc with Alessio Bax, presenting Stravinsky’s original four-hand version of the ballet Petrouchka as well as music by Brahms and Piazzolla for Signum Records. In 2015, she released an all Poulenc album which was chosen as the “Recording of the Month” on MusicWeb and most recently in April 2018, a Liszt solo recital album for Signum Records. Lucille is fluent in French, English, Korean, Italian, German, and Russian. She and husband, pianist Alessio Bax make their home in New York City with their daughter, Mila, and are artistic co-directors of the Joaquín Achúcarro Foundation. www.lucillechung.com

February 26, 2017: Emanuel Ax, piano Samuel Adams (1985) Impromptu: After Schubert (Premiere Performance) February 26, 2017: Emanuel Ax, piano Highly acclaimed for his imaginative, atmospheric works, Samuel Adams composes acoustic and electroacoustic music that draws on traditional forms, noise, and his experiences as an improvisor. He has received commissions from such prestigious entities as Carnegie Hall, the San Francisco and New World Symphonies, the St. Lawrence String Quartet, and—resulting in the present work—pianist Emanuel Ax. In 2015 the Chicago Symphony Orchestra named Adams a Mead Composer-in-Residence, which not only involves creating new works for the orchestra but co-curating the CSO’s acclaimed MusicNOW series. Light Readings , commissioned by MusicNOW, just received its premiere in 2016 by the Northwestern Bienen School of Music Contemporary/Early Vocal Ensemble and members of the Chicago Symphony. The year 2016 also saw the premiere of his Quartet Movement by the forward-thinking, Chicago-based Spektral Quartet. Adams is currently working on a piece for the Australian Chamber Orchestra and recently received a fellowship from the Civitella Ranieri Foundation in Umbria, Italy, where he will be an artist-in-residence during the summer of 2017. A committed educator, Adams frequently engages in projects with young musicians, among them the National Youth Orchestra of the United States of America (NYOUSA), for which he composed a work that was premiered under the baton of David Robertson. In the summer of 2016 he worked with the National Orchestral Institute fellows to record his Drift and Providence for release on the Naxos label. Adams also teaches composition periodically at the Crowden School in Berkeley, California. He himself studied composition and electroacoustic music at Stanford University while also active as a jazz bassist in San Francisco. He earned his master’s degree in composition from the Yale School of Music. Adams’s Impromptus, still a work in progress, date mainly from 2015–16, written for Emanuel Ax on a commission from Music Accord, a consortium of top classical music presenting organizations. Ax was scheduled to premiere the pieces on his European tour and give the U.S. premiere in December 2016 at the University of Iowa, but the present performance constitutes the launch of the work through the performance of the second of these Impromptus, “After Schubert,” composed in the winter of 2015–16. The composer writes: “I created these three pieces with the intention that they would be performed as links between each of the Four Impromptus, D. 935, by Franz Schubert. I imagine they could also be performed on their own—in any order or perhaps individually. . . . The process of writing the pieces was a terrific excuse to reacquaint myself with Schubert’s crystalline works (I used to play the Impromptus as a young pianist) and to rediscover their clarity, patience, and resonance. “The music I created aims to assume a similar posture. Each impromptu is carefully constructed but rooted in a simple impulse . . . the second [constitutes] a symmetrical ABA form with material lifted from American folk music and the Sonata in B-flat major. . . . Sincerest thanks to Emanuel Ax for this wonderful opportunity.” © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

September 29, 2024: Rafael Figueroa, cello; Jeewon Park, piano Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) Song Without Words in D for cello and piano September 29, 2024: Rafael Figueroa, cello; Jeewon Park, piano Beginning in September 1829 and continuing throughout his life, Mendelssohn composed eight sets of Lieder ohne Worte (Songs without words), a genre he originated, principally for piano, which blurred the boundary between song and character piece. The term first appeared in letters to his sister Fanny and in print in 1833. He composed eight sets of six pieces each: opp. 9b, 30, 38, 53, 62, and 67 were published during his lifetime, and opp. 85 and 102 appeared posthumously. Fortunately for cellists, he also wrote a Song Without Words for cello and piano, op. 109. Penned around October 1845, this gem was published posthumously in 1868. Mostly lyrical, some virtuosic, these short pieces exemplify the Romantic thought that music could express something words could not. Though they are written in the manner derived from solo song, Mendelssohn left most of them untitled except for a handful—Venetian Gondola Song, Duetto, and Folk Song—leaving the listener free to imagine what poetry might have inspired them. The Songs Without Words generally—as in this case—contain a lyrical melody over a figural accompaniment pattern. Though the figuration usually stays the same throughout the piece, the central section often modulates or contains a new melodic idea creating an A-B-A form. Here new piano figuration swirls tempestuously around a turbulent new cello melody. A pensive transition brings a return of the calm A section and an ethereal conclusion. —©Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2016 AT 3 PM Jason Vieaux, guitar; Escher String Quartet BUY TICKETS ESCHER STRING QUARTET “The Escher players seemed to make time stand still, effortlessly distilling the essence of this introspective music with expressive warmth and a natural confiding intimacy.” — Chicago Classical Review JASON VIEAUX, GUITAR “…perhaps the most precise and soulful classical guitarist of his generation.” – NPR FEATURING ABOUT THE PERFORMANCE BUY TICKETS Our gala opener on September 25 will have you dancing in the aisles. Grammy Award-winning guitarist Jason Vieaux will collaborate with the stellar Escher String Quartet in an exuberant international mix. The afternoon will journey from Hugo Wolf ’s buoyant Italian Serenade to Luigi Boccherini ’s sizzling Fandango , reaching a toe-tapping climax with Alan Jay Kernis ’s irrepressible 100 Greatest Dance Hits for Guitar and String Quartet . PROGRAM Hugo Wolf Italian Serenade for string quartet Program Notes Antonio Vivaldi Guitar Concerto in D, RV 93 Program Notes Luigi Boccherini Quintet in D for guitar and string Program Notes Johann Sebastian Bach Suite in E minor, BWV 996 for solo guitar Program Notes Francisco Tárrega Capricho árabe for solo guitar Program Notes Alan Jay Kernis 100 Great Dance Hits for guitar and string quartet Program Notes Jason Vieaux performs Albéniz’s Sevilla: The Escher String Quartet performs Schubert’s ‘Death and the Maiden’ Quartet, Mvts 1 & 2:

XAK BJERKEN, PIANO Xak Bjerken has appeared with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Spoleto Festival Orchestra, the Schoenberg Ensemble, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He has performed at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Glinka Hall in Saint Petersburg, the Konzerthaus in Berlin, and for many years performed throughout the US as a member of the Los Angeles Piano Quartet. He has worked closely with composers György Kurtag, Sofia Gubaidulina, Steven Stucky, and George Benjamin, and has premiered piano concertos by Stephen Hartke, Elizabeth Ogonek, and Jesse Jones, a recording of which was released by Naxos in September 2021. He is also director of Ensemble X, a new music group, and has held chamber music residencies at the Tanglewood Music Center, Spoleto Festival, and Olympic Music Festival. Mr. Bjerken is Professor of Music at Cornell University, where he co-directs Mayfest with his wife, pianist Miri Yampolsky. He has also served on the faculties of Kneisel Hall, Eastern Music Festival, and Chamber Music Conference at Bennington College. He received his master’s and doctoral degrees from the Peabody Conservatory as a student of and teaching assistant of Leon Fleisher.

November 19, 2017: Los Angeles Guitar Quartet PAT METHENY Road to the Sun November 19, 2017: Los Angeles Guitar Quartet Guitar is an interesting instrument. Across virtually all genres, it remains an ongoing research project – in the best possible sense. It is an instrument that in general is somewhat undefined by any single approach. There are seemingly infinite ways to deploy the potential of what it offers. And in multiples, those potentials grow exponentially. A few years back, I was flattered to have one of my compositions included in the LAGQ’s Grammy winning CD Guitar Heroes. Not long after that the idea came up that I might someday write something new for them. The idea of writing a guitar quartet inspired by the talents of the LAGQ has been simmering somewhere in the back of my mind ever since. The thought of really addressing the instrument in a more formal way under the auspices of what this quartet has come to embody, not to mention the sheer, almost overwhelming individual skills of the four players, was something I really wanted to do. It was just a matter of finding the time I knew that I would need to do it. Luckily for me, I am very busy as a bandleader and I feel privileged to be able to record and tour almost constantly with my own groups. But after a particularly active year in 2014 where I did more than 150 concerts around the world, I decided, for the first time, to take a year off from the road in 2015. Hopefully, I thought, I could get caught up with a few things. Kind of on my list was this lingering idea of finally writing something for the LAGQ. Near the end of the year, I saw a window opening up where I would have a few weeks that I might dedicate to this. With the approval of the guys and a few really useful tips from all of them, I jumped in, hoping to write a concert piece of 7 to 9 minutes. Two weeks later, I found myself with a nearly 30 minute, 6 movement treatise on the aforementioned potentials of what can happen in a multi-guitar format, blazingly inspired by the thought of hearing these four incredible guitarists play these notes. The piece just literally poured out. In truth, as much as I am identified as being a guitarist myself, I don’t really spend a whole lot of time thinking about the instrument in a specific way. It has always been an almost inadvertent tool for me to translate ideas into sound, and mostly as an improviser at that. And in fact, when I do compose for various projects or for my bands, I almost always am doing it at the piano, a much more forgiving and logical universe to write in than the odd geometry of guitar-thought. But for this piece, I decided to really embrace the instrument and kind of get under the hood of a bunch of things that I do with the instrument, things that are somewhat identified with what it seems has now become my particular style, while at the same time reach for the narrative element of storytelling that is the imperative and primary function for me always as a musician. And yet, with the piece now complete, as much as those components provided an aspirational environment to work from, the main quality that I think the piece offers is the emotional journey that it takes. Somehow through the challenge of writing for this unique platform and aiming it towards the hands of these especially talented players, I was able to get to a very personal area of what music itself is to me. It feels like a journey to me, almost a road trip in scale and scope. In settling on the title “Road to the Sun”, I thought back to my trip up to Glacier National Park on the famous “Going-to-the-Sun Road”, the day after hearing LAGQ play live for the first time at a festival in Montana. It has been a thrill to get the chance to write for the amazing Los Angeles Guitar Quartet and I am very excited to hear what William, Scott, John and Matt will do on their journey with this work. -Pat Metheny February 2016 Pat Metheny: Road to the Sun (2016) was commissioned through the International Arts Foundation, Inc. for the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet by the lead commissioners: Newman Center for the Performing Arts/University of Denver and Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, College of Fine + Applied Arts, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Additional support provided by co-commissioners: Lobero Theater Foundation, Hopkins Center at Dartmouth College, 92nd Street Y, Performing Arts Series at Johnson County Community College and Soka University of America/Soka Performing Arts Center. Return to Parlance Program Notes

April 3, 2016: Sir James Galway and Lady Jeanne Galway, flutes; Benjamin Beilman solo violin; Sean Lee and Danbi Um, violins; Mark Holloway, viola; Nicholas Canellakis, cello; Timothy Cobb, bass; Paolo Bourdignon, harpsichord JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685-1750) Brandenburg Concerto No. 4, BWV 1049 for two flutes, solo violin, strings, and continuo April 3, 2016: Sir James Galway and Lady Jeanne Galway, flutes; Benjamin Beilman solo violin; Sean Lee and Danbi Um, violins; Mark Holloway, viola; Nicholas Canellakis, cello; Timothy Cobb, bass; Paolo Bourdignon, harpsichord In March 1719, when Bach was in Berlin to collect the new harpsichord made for Cöthen by court instrument maker Michael Mietke, he had occasion to play for Margrave Christian Ludwig of Brandenburg. The meeting spurred the Margrave to invite Bach to send him some compositions. The works that he sent probably originated in Weimar even before Bach’s move to Cöthen in 1717, but it took yet another two years for him to complete, compile, and submit his “Six concerts avec plusieurs instruments” (Six concertos with several instruments). He dedicated the 1721 manuscript to the Margrave, saying: As I had a couple of years ago the pleasure of appearing before Your Royal Highness . . . and as I noticed then that Your Highness took some pleasure in the small talents that Heaven has given me for Music, and as in taking leave of Your Royal Highness, Your Highness deigned to honor me with the command to send Your Highness some pieces of my composition: I have then in accordance with Your Highness’s most gracious orders taken the liberty of rendering my most humble duty to Your Royal Highness with the present Concertos, which I have adapted to several instruments. No record exists of the Margrave of Brandenburg ever using the scores, ever sending Bach a fee, or ever thanking him. Legend has it that a lack of acknowledgment may have stemmed from the Margrave’s instrumental resources not matching those of Cöthen or Weimar, thus rendering the pieces unperformable at his establishment. But this overlooks the fact that Bach used unprecedented and different scoring in each of the individual works, treating the collection like an “Art of the Concerto Grosso” and thus was not aiming to match any specific establishment’s resources. The manuscript eventually became the property of the state library in Berlin, remaining unpublished until the Bach revival in the nineteenth century. In 1880 Philipp Spitta, Bach’s famous biographer, coined the term “Brandenburg Concertos,” which has been used ever since for the well-loved works. The standard plan for the eighteenth-century concerto grosso was simple and at the same time flexible. The format, developed by Torelli, Corelli, and Vivaldi, consisted of a small group of solo instruments (the concertino) alternating with a larger group (the ripieno or tutti). Most of these works used a string orchestra for the ripieno and two violins and cello for the concertino, and the usual number of movements was three: fast, slow, fast. Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos offer a wide spectrum of innovative instrumental schemes and combinations and a great variety in treatment of form. Nos. 1, 3, and 6 use instrumental forces that are fairly balanced in number, whereas Nos. 2, 4, and 5 contrast a small concertino with a large ripieno. The Fourth Concerto combines elements of a solo violin concerto and a concerto grosso, with a concertino group of the solo violin and two flutes (originally recorders). The solo violin is required to play almost without pause in the first movement, and to execute virtuosic cadenza-like passages in the third movement. The lightning-quick scale passages and double-stops make this Concerto as difficult, if not more difficult, than any of Bach’s violin concertos. The three movements of the Fourth Brandenburg Concerto follow the traditional fast-slow-fast arrangement. The first movement uses da capo form (a beginning section, followed by a contrasting section, then a repeat of the first section). The slow movement revolves around chains of pulsing two-note groupings and makes much of the contrast between loud (full group) and soft (soloists alone). The texture of much of the last movement is fugal, and its momentum is infectious. Near the end the “heartbeat” is twice suspended by forceful chords and rests before the energetic push to the finish. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes