15-16 Alexander String Quartet Program

ALEXANDER STRING QUARETwith Robert Greenberg

BEETHOVEN: BEFORE, DURING AND AFTER

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 1

SUNDAY, JANUARY 10

SUNDAY, MARCH 6

Western Health AdvantageSeason of Performing Arts

Prog

ram

ALEXANDER STRING QUARTETBeethoven: Before, During and After

Zakarias Grafilo, violin Frederick Lifsitz, violinPaul Yarbrough, viola

Sandy Wilson, cello

2PM Performances: Musicologist, author and composer Robert Greenberg provides commentary throughout the concert.7PM Performances: The quartet performs this program without intermission, then remains for a Q&A session with the audience.

The Alexander String Quartet is represented byBesenArts LLCBesenArts.com

The Alexander String Quartet records for FogHornClassics

asq4.com

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 2015 • 2PM & 7PM

SUNDAY, JANUARY 10, 2016 • 2PM & 7PM

SUNDAY, MARCH 6, 2016 • 2PM & 7PM

Vanderhoef Studio Theatre

Individual support provided by Thomas and Phyllis Farver

The artists and fellow audience members appreciate silence during the performance. Please be sure that you have switched off cellular phones,

watch alarms and pager signals. Videotaping, photographing and audio recording are strictly forbidden. Violators are subject to removal.

ROBERT AND MARGRIT MONDAVI CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS PRESENTS

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 2015 • 2PM & 7PM P. 4

String Quartet No. 18 in A Major, K. 464 (1785) Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Allegro (1756-1791) Menuetto Andante Allegro non troppo

Intermission (2PM only)

String Quartet No. 5 in A Major, Op. 18, No. 5 (1798-1800) Ludwig van Beethoven Allegro (1770-1827) Menuetto Andante cantabile Allegro

SUNDAY, JANUARY 10, 2016 • 2PM & 7PM P. 5

String Quartet No. 11 in F Minor, Op. 95 “Serioso” (1810) Beethoven Allegro con brio Allegretto ma non troppo Allegro assai vivace ma serioso Larghetto espressivo — Allegretto agitato


String Quartet No. 6 in F Minor, Op. 80 (1847) Felix Mendelssohn Allegro vivace assai (1809-1847) Allegro assai Adagio Allegro molto

SUNDAY, MARCH 6, 2016 • 2PM & 7PM P. 6

GUEST ARTIST: Roger Woodward, piano

Quartet for Piano & Strings No.3 in C Major, WoO 36 (1785) Beethoven Allegro vivace Adagio con espressione Rondo: Allegro


Invasive Species (2012)) Robert Greenberg Three-Part Intention (b. 1954) March of the Yellow Crazy Ants One-Part Incursion Pretty Pretty Poison Two-Part Ignition E. globulus (10-20-1991) (7PM only)String Quartet No. 9 in C Major, Op. 59, No. 3 (1806) Beethoven Introduzione: Andante con moto — Allegro vivace Andante con moto quasi Allegretto Menuetto: Grazioso Allegro molto

PROGRAM

Sunday, November 1

String Quartet No. 18 in A Major, K. 464 (1785) Allegro Menuetto Andante Allegro non troppo


String Quartet No. 5 in A Major, Op. 18, No. 5 (1798-1800) Allegro Menuetto Andante cantabile Allegro

PROGRAM NOTES

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZARTBorn January 27, 1756, SalzburgDied December 5, 1791, Vienna

String Quartet in A Major, K. 464

We too often think of Mozart as an utterly natural composer, someone who could conceive an entire piece in his head to the point where writing it out was a purely mechanical task. There may be some substance to that stereotype, but it was not invariably true, and on certain works Mozart worked long and hard. In this category fall the six string quartets he began shortly after moving to Vienna in 1781. Mozart had been astonished by Haydn’s string quartets and by the possibilities the older composer had found in that form, and these six quartets—composed between 1782 and 1785—show the young composer taking command of this difficult form and making it fully his own. Mozart was honest enough, though, to acknowledge the example of a master, and he dedicated these six quartets to Haydn when they were published in 1785.

Haydn in turn was blown away by these quartets. He heard the final three (which included the Quartet in A Major performed on this program) at a concert in Vienna in February, 1785, and he pulled Mozart’s father Leopold aside to offer one of the most generous compliments one composer ever paid another: “Before God and as an honest man, I tell you that your son is the greatest composer known to me either in person or by name. He has taste and, what is more, the most profound knowledge of composition.” Haydn was not the only composer stunned by this music. A decade later, the young Beethoven, embarking on his own first set of string quartets, copied out the entire last movement of the Quartet in A Major as a way of studying it in detail. Beethoven’s friend Carl Czerny reported that Beethoven once took up the score of this quartet and exclaimed in wonder: “That’s what I call a work! In it, Mozart was telling the world: Look what I could create if the time were right!”

Yet at first glance, there seems nothing unusual about this quartet: a sonata-form opening movement, a minuet, a variation-form slow movement, and a quick-paced finale. Such a description, though,

does not begin to define what is distinctive about this music: the depth of feeling in the music, the utter ease of the writing for the four voices, or the emotional effect of the last movement. The quartet is neither stormy nor melancholy, but by the time it reaches its understated conclusion, Mozart has distilled stunning emotional power into this music.

The Allegro that opens the quartet seems simplicity itself: a flowing and easy first idea (its two opening pulses will recur in various forms throughout the movement), followed by a second subject in the unexpected key of C major. The Menuetto opens with a firm unison that quickly gives way to a dancing counterstatement from the violins; the trio is also in an unexpected key, this time E major. The Andante is a set of variations on the first violin’s opening idea. This melody—grave, graceful, and elegant at the same time—grows more complex as it develops across the six variations: Mozart syncopates it, decorates it with dotted rhythms and swirling runs, and passes the melodic line between the four instruments; at the fifth variation, the cello accompanies with a drumlike tattoo that beats quietly to the very end of the movement. The finale, marked Allegro non troppo, grows entirely out of its (seemingly) simple opening theme, but alert listeners will recognize subtle thematic and rhythmic links with the first movement. Mozart makes this music sing beautifully, and the ending is wonderful: the music grows quiet as fragments of this theme are passed from instrument to instrument, and suddenly the music—like smoke—vanishes before us. Beethoven and Haydn—and everyone else who has heard this quartet—were quite right to be astonished by it.

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVENBorn December 16, 1770, BonnDied March 26, 1827, Vienna

String Quartet in A Major, Op. 18, No. 5

Beethoven’s first string quartets, a set of six written in Vienna during the years 1798-1800, inevitably show the influence of Haydn and Mozart, who had made the form a great one. Scholars have been unanimous in believing that the fifth quartet of Beethoven’s set had a quite specific model: Mozart’s String Quartet in A Major, K.464, composed in 1785. Beethoven greatly admired this particular quartet and had copied out the last two movements as a way of studying them. For his own quartet, Beethoven took both the key and general layout of Mozart’s quartet: a sonata-form first movement, a minuet movement that comes second, a theme-and-variation third movement, and a sonata-form finale that—like Mozart’s—ends quietly.

But it is unfair to Beethoven to see his Quartet in A Major as just an imitation of Mozart’s masterpiece. Though the two composers were the same age when they wrote these quartets (29), Beethoven was still feeling his way with a form Mozart had mastered, and though he may have chosen Mozart as a model, this music sounds in every measure like young Beethoven. The opening Allegro is built on two nicely-contrasted ideas—a soaring opening theme and a darker, more melodic second idea—and Beethoven asks for a repeat of both exposition and development. The opening of the minuet belongs entirely to the violins, with

4 | MondaviArts.org

the second violin gracefully following and commenting on the first’s theme; the trio section—with the theme in the middle voices under the first violin’s drone—is surprisingly short.Longest of the movements, the Andante cantabile offers five variations on the simple falling-and-rising idea announced at the beginning; particularly effective are the fugal first variation, the first violin’s staccato triplets in the second, and the expressive fourth, which Beethoven marks sempre pp. A long coda leads to a restatement of the theme and a quiet close. The energetic and good-natured finale is in sonata (rather than the expected rondo) form. The opening melody leaps smoothly between instruments, and Beethoven offers a quiet chorale as the second theme. The writing for all four voices is extremely accomplished here, and on the energy of the opening idea, the music rushes to its close, which brings a sudden and surprisingly quiet concluding chord.

—Eric Bromberger

Sunday, January 10, 2016

String Quartet No. 11 in F Minor, Op. 95 “Serioso” (1810) Allegro con brio Allegretto ma non troppo Allegro assai vivace ma serioso Larghetto espressivo — Allegretto agitato


String Quartet No. 6 in F Minor, Op. 80 (1847) Allegro vivace assai Allegro assai Adagio Allegro molto

PROGRAM NOTES


String Quartet No. 11 in F Minor, Op. 95 “Serioso”

This quartet has a nickname, “Quartetto Serioso,” that—quite unusually for a musical nickname—came from the composer himself. Well aware of the music’s extraordinary character, Beethoven described the quartet as having been “written for a small circle of connoisseurs and ... never to be performed in public.” Joseph Kerman has described it as “an involved, impassioned, highly idiosyncratic piece, problematic in every one of its movements, advanced in a hundred ways” and “unmatched in Beethoven’s output for compression, exaggerated articulation, and a corresponding sense of extreme tension.” Yet this same quartet—virtually the shortest of Beethoven’s string quartets—comes from the same period as the easily accessible “Archduke” trio, the seventh and eighth symphonies and the incidental music to Goethe’s Egmont. Beethoven was approaching his 40th birthday when he completed the quartet in the fall of 1810, and this music’s extraordinary focus and tension seem sharply at odds

with those other, more popular scores. Beethoven was at this time nearing the end of his second period of composition, sometimes called his “Heroic Style,” but some critics hear in this quartet prefigurations of his late style and the great cycle of quartets written during his last years.

The first movement is extraordinarily compressed (it lasts barely four minutes), and it catapults listeners through an unexpected series of key relationships. The unison opening figure is almost spit out, passing through and ending in a “wrong” key, and then followed by complete silence. Octave leaps and furious restatements of the opening figure lead to the swaying second theme, announced in flowing triplets by the viola. The development section of this (highly modified) sonata-form movement is quite short, treating only the opening theme, before the movement exhausts itself on fragments of that theme.

The marking of the second movement, Allegretto ma non troppo, might seem to suggest some relief, but this movement is even more closely argued than the first. The cello’s strange descending line introduces a lovely opening melody, but this quickly gives way to a long and complex fugue, its sinuous subject announced by the viola and then taken up and developed by the other voices. A quiet close (derived from the cello’s introduction) links this movement to the third, a violent fast movement. Note the marking: Beethoven once again stresses Allegro assai vivace ma serioso. The movement is in ABABA form, the explosive opening section alternating with a chorale-like subject for the lower three voices which the first violin decorates. Once again, Beethoven takes each section into unexpected keys. The last movement has a slow introduction—Larghetto espressivo—full of the darkness that has marked the first three movements, and this leads to a blistering finale that does much to dispel the tension. In an oft-quoted remark about the arrival of this theme, American composer Randall Thompson is reported to have said: “No bottle of champagne was ever uncorked at a better moment.” In contrast, for example, to the near-contemporary seventh symphony, which ends in wild celebration, this quartet has an almost consciously antiheroic close, concluding with a very fast coda that Beethoven marks simply Allegro.

Many commentators have felt that the Quartet in F Minor is composed with the same technique as the late quartets but without their sense of spiritual elevation, and in this sense they see the present quartet as looking ahead toward the late style. But it is unfair to this music to regard it simply as a forerunner of another style. This quartet may be dark, explosive, and extremely concentrated—but it should be valued for just those qualities.

—Eric Bromberger

FELIX MENDELSSOHNBorn February 3, 1809, HamburgDied November 4, 1847, Leipzig

String Quartet No. 6 in F Minor, Op. 80

Mendelssohn’s life was short, and its ending was particularly painful. Always a driven man, he was showing signs of exhaustion

MondaviArts.org | 5

during the 1846-7 season, which included trips to London and conducting engagements on the continent. In May 1847 came the catastrophic event: his sister, Fanny, only 41, suffered a stroke and died within hours. She and her younger brother had always been exceptionally close. Mendelssohn collapsed upon learning of her death, and he never recovered. Worried family members took him on vacation to Switzerland, where they hoped he could regain his strength and composure. At Interlaken, Mendelssohn painted, composed the String Quartet in F Minor, and tried to escape his sorrow, but with little success. An English visitor described his last view of the composer that summer: “I thought even then, as I followed his figure, looking none the younger for the loose dark coat and the wide brimmed straw hat bound with black crepe, which he wore, that he was too much depressed and worn, and walked too heavily.” Back in Leipzig, Mendelssohn cancelled his engagements, suffered severe headaches, and was confined to bed. After several days in which he slipped in and out of consciousness, the composer died on the evening of November 4. He was 38 years old.

Given the circumstances of its creation, one might expect Mendelssohn’s String Quartet in F Minor to be somber music, and in fact it is. It is the last of Mendelssohn’s quartets (and his last major completed work), but it has never achieved the popularity of his five earlier quartets: the pianist Ignaz Moscheles found it the product of “an agitated state of mind.” Yet this quartet’s driven quality is also the source of its distinction and strength. One feels this from the first instant of the Allegro vivace assai (it is worth noting the three of the four movements are extremely fast). The double-stroked writing, even at a very quiet dynamic, pushes the music forward nervously, and out of this ominous rustle leaps the dotted figures that will be a part of so much of this movement. A more flowing second subject nevertheless maintains the same dark cast, and after a long development this movement drives to its close on a presto coda.

The second movement, marked Allegro assai, is in A-B-A form: the driving outer sections keep the dotted rhythm of the opening movement while the trio rocks along more gently. The Adagio, the only movement not in a minor key, is built on the first violin’s lyric opening idea. The music rises to a somewhat frantic climax full of dotted rhythms before subsiding to a close peacefully. The finale, marked Allegro molto, pushes ahead on the vigor of its syncopated rhythms, which are set off by quick exchanges between groups of instruments. As in the first movement, there is more relaxed secondary material, but the principal impression here is of nervous energy, and at the close, the music hurdles along triplet rhythms to an almost superheated close in which the F-minor tonality is affirmed with vengeance. It is not a conclusion that brings much relief, and it speaks directly from the agonized consciousness of its creator.

—Eric Bromberger

Sunday, March 6, 2016

Quartet for Piano & Strings No.3 in C Major, WoO 36 (1785) Allegro vivace Adagio con espressione Rondo: Allegro


Invasive Species (2012) Three-Part Intention March of the Yellow Crazy Ants One-Part Incursion Pretty Pretty Poison Two-Part Ignition E. globulus (10-20-1991)

(7PM only)String Quartet No. 9 in C Major, Op. 59, No. 3 (1806) Introduzione: Andante con moto — Allegro vivace Andante con moto quasi Allegretto Menuetto: Grazioso Allegro molto

PROGRAM NOTES


Quartet for Piano & Strings No.3 in C Major, WoO 36 (1785)

Even as a boy Beethoven knew that he wanted to compose, and with the arrival in Bonn in 1781 of Christian Gottlob Neefe, he finally had a teacher who would direct his efforts and help him develop as musician, composer, and human being. Over the years of Beethoven’s early teens came a steady flow of works under Neefe’s tutelage. From 1782 came the young man’s Variations on a March of Dressler, from 1782-83 three piano sonatas, from 1784 a Piano Concerto in E-flat Major, and from 1785 a set of three quartets for piano and strings.

Several of Beethoven’s youthful works were published, but the three piano quartets remained in manuscript until 1828, the year after the composer’s death. Scholars have offered different theories about why Beethoven chose not to publish these youthful efforts. Some feel that they show a lack of musical maturity, others that they are too dominated by the piano, still others that they show too great an influence of Mozart (though that influence would have to be stylistic rather than form—Beethoven’s three piano quartets were written before Mozart’s own two magnificent piano quartets). In fact, a few years after writing these quartets, Beethoven borrowed some of their themes for his piano sonatas (the second theme of the first movement of the present Quartet in C Major occupies the same position in Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in C Major, Opus 2, No. 3). He may well have felt at that point that he could not published those earlier works from which he had borrowed.

6 | MondaviArts.org

In any case, Beethoven quickly lost interest in the piano quartet as a form, so these three youthful essays remain his only works in that form. All three are brief, all three have fast outer movements surrounding a lyrical slow movement, and all offer rondo-finales. The opening Allegro vivace of the Piano Quartet in C Major is a vigorous movement, and indeed it is largely dominated by the piano, which introduces the themes and has brilliant runs. The slow movement has the unusual marking Adagio con espressione, and here the strings take up the main idea only after the piano has fully introduced it. In the finale, the piano alone lays out the rondo theme and in fact has most of the musical interest in this movement—perhaps the 14-year-old composer intended this quartet for his own use and wanted to be sure that he remained firmly in the spotlight.

—Eric Bromberger

ROBERT GREENBERGBorn April 18, 1954, Brooklyn

Invasive Species

The title Invasive Species refers to non-native species of plants and animals that, once introduced to a new environment, have an adverse effect on the habitats and bioregions they invade and colonize.

Specifically, this piece is about three “invasive species”: yellow crazy ants (“March of the Yellow Crazy Ants”), water hyacinths (“Pretty Pretty Poison”), and gum eucalyptus (“E. globulus”). Generally, the piece is about confrontations between like and unlike elements, as depicted – in particular - by the confrontation between the piano and the string quartet.

The yellow crazy ant (Anoplolepis gracilipes) most likely originated in West Africa. Accidentally introduced to northern Australia, it has devastated the local ecology. The ant is called “crazy” because of its unpredictable movements as well as its long legs and antennae that render it most definitely goofy. Goofy this movement is as well. It starts out quietly but ultimately it occupies all the registral space available, from top to bottom, a strained (but well-intended) metaphor for the ant’s invasive domination of its bio-niche.

The common water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes) is a free-floating aquatic plant native to South America. Characterized by beautiful, lavender-to-pink, six-petaled flowers, the water hyacinth has invaded and colonized large areas throughout North America, Asia, Australia, and Africa, where it starves bodies of water of oxygen, killing off native species while choking entire ecosystems with its bulk. This movement is two movements in one: a fast movement and a slow movement. In the first part, the strings portray a lively, oxygenated, watery environment (“pretty”) that is slowly strangled by the emergence of the piano. The second part of the movement consists of a lush chorale for the piano (“pretty poison”), a chorale that nevertheless chokes off the unfortunate strings.

“E. globulus” refers to the Blue Gum Eucalyptus (Eucalyptus globulus), an incredibly fast-growing tree native to Australia. Blue Gum Eucalyptus trees were planted in huge number in the San Francisco Bay Area during the 19th century in the erroneous belief that they would supply timber when mature. It was a major eco-blunder. As it turns out, the hard, oily Eucalyptus wood makes poor lumber but extraordinarily flammable tinder. The incendiary nature of these trees was made abundantly clear during the Oakland Hills Fire Storm (October 20, 1991), which spread with terrifying speed thanks, in large part, to exploding Eucalyptus trees. In a series of episodes, this movement depicts the growth, combustion, and storm of fire abetted by the Eucalyptus on 10-20-1991.

Three brief introductory movements precede each of the “invasive species”: “Three-Part Intention”, “One-Part Incursion”, and “Two-Part Ignition”. The titular references to Bach were made irresistible by the superb recording of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier made by pianist Roger Woodward, who is one of the dedicatees of the piece. Indeed, Woodward’s piano might well be considered the invasive element among the stringed instruments of his fellow dedicatees in the Alexander String Quartet.

Invasive Species is dedicated—with love and respect—to Roger Woodward and the Alexander String Quartet on the occasion of the ASQ’s 30th anniversary.

—Robert Greenberg


String Quartet No. 9 in C Major, Op. 59, No. 3

The three string quartets of Beethoven’s Op. 59 were commissioned by Count Andreas Razumovsky—the Russian ambassador to Vienna and an accomplished violinist—brilliantly scored, adventurous harmonically, and conceived on a scale of grandeur previously unknown in quartet writing. The breadth of their conception has led to their being called “symphonic quartets,” and it is no surprise that they met with little popular or critical success—no one had ever heard quartets like these before.

The Quartet in C Major opens in an aural fog: purposely obscuring both harmony and rhythm, Beethoven cuts the listener adrift and leaves him struggling for some sense of direction. Then the first violin leaps out brightly with the opening theme of the Allegro vivace and establishes the clear tonality of C major. Note carefully the violin’s first two notes: the rise of a halfstep will unify the entire first movement. The first violin has so prominent a role that this movement has something of the feel of a violin concerto: that virtuoso part, often in a very high register, dominates this sonata-form movement, while the other three voices are frequently relegated to the role of accompanists. The music arrives at a moment of stasis before one of Beethoven’s shortest codas: the cello’s halfstep rises launch a rapid chromatic stringendo to the final cadence.

MondaviArts.org | 7

The Andante, one of Beethoven’s most effective slow movements, opens with a forte pizzicato from the cello, and the first violin outlines the brooding A-minor theme that will dominate the movement. A surprising feature of the Andante is that the steady tread of six eighth-notes per measures continues almost throughout, but rather than becoming monotonous, this measured pace takes on a force of its own, particularly as it is reinforced by Beethoven’s imaginative and expressive use of cello pizzicato. A second theme—in C Major—lightens the mood somewhat, but the tone of the Andante remains dark and restless. Once again, the first violin rises high above the other instruments, often in passages of almost aching beauty.

In contrast to the intense Andante, the Menuetto can seem lightweight. Vincent D’Indy sneered that it is “a return to the style of 1796,” and it is true that the movement lacks the originality of the two movements that surround it. But if the music can seem lightweight, it agreeably lessens the tension between the powerful movements on either side of it, and Beethoven makes piquant contrast between the flowing legato of the minuet and the sharply articulated staccato of the trio. Rather than conclude with a simple da capo, Beethoven writes out a coda that leads without pause to the final movement.

The finale explodes to life with a brilliant fugue introduced by the viola. This movement has been called a fugue, but that is inaccurate: only the beginning is fugal—the remainder is in sonata form. The most impressive aspect of this movement is its relentless energy: the finale is virtually a perpetual motion for four virtuoso players. One of its most memorable sequences occurs in the development: each of the instruments is in turn given a brilliant eight-measure passage (based on the final measure of the fugue theme) that simply goes up and comes down the scale. But Beethoven specifies that each instrument must remain on one string, and the result is a brief but dazzling cadenza for each instrument as the others accompany. It is gloriously apt quartet writing, and the effect in performance is breathtaking. There are few finales in Beethoven—or anywhere else—full of such headlong energy, and the music finally hurtles to a cadence. But it is a false cadence, as if Beethoven is unwilling to quit too soon. The music tentatively resumes, then speeds ahead and—set off by a lovely counter-theme in the second violin—races to the end of one of Beethoven’s most exciting finales.

—Eric Bromberger

ALEXANDER STRING QUARTETHaving celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2011, the Alexander String Quartet has performed in the major music capitals of five continents, securing its standing among the world’s premier ensembles. Widely admired for its interpretations of Beethoven, Mozart, and Shostakovich, the quartet’s recordings of the Beethoven cycle (twice), Bartók, and Shostakovich cycle have won international critical acclaim. The quartet has also established itself as an important advocate of new music through over 25 commissions from such composers as Jake Heggie, Cindy Cox, Augusta Read Thomas, Robert Greenberg, Martin Bresnick, César Cano, and Pulitzer Prize-winner Wayne Peterson. A new work by Tarik O’Regan, commissioned for the Alexander by the Boise Chamber Music Series, will have its premiere in 2016.

The Alexander String Quartet is a major artistic presence in its home base of San Francisco, serving since 1989 as Ensemble-in-Residence of San Francisco Performances and Directors of the Morrison Chamber Music Center in the College of Liberal and Creative Arts at San Francisco State University.The Alexander String Quartet’s annual calendar of concerts includes engagements at major halls throughout North America and Europe. The quartet has appeared at Lincoln Center, the 92nd Street Y, and the Metropolitan Museum in New York City; Jordan Hall in Boston; the Library of Congress and Dumbarton Oaks in Washington; and chamber music societies and universities across the North American continent. Recent overseas tours have brought them to the U.K., the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Italy, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, France, Greece, the Republic of Georgia, Argentina, Panamá, and the Philippines. They will return to Poland for their debut performances at the Beethoven Easter Festival in 2015.

Among the fine musicians with whom the Alexander String Quartet has collaborated are pianists Joyce Yang, Roger Woodward, Anne-Marie McDermott, Menachem Pressler, and Jeremy Menuhin; clarinetists Joan Enric Lluna, David Shifrin, Richard Stoltzman, and Eli Eban; soprano Elly Ameling; mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato; cellists Lynn Harrell, Sadao Harada, and David Requiro; and jazz greats Branford Marsalis, David Sanchez, and Andrew Speight. The quartet has worked with many composers including Aaron Copland, George Crumb, and Elliott Carter, and has long enjoyed a close relationship with composer-lecturer Robert Greenberg, performing numerous lecture-concerts with him annually.

The Alexander String Quartet added considerably to its distinguished and wide-ranging discography over the past decade, now recording exclusively for the FoghornClassics label. There were three major releases in the 2013-2014 season: The combined string quartet cycles of Bartók and Kodály, recorded on the renowned Ellen M. Egger matched quartet of instruments built by San Francisco luthier, Francis Kuttner (“If ever an album had ‘Grammy nominee’ written on its front cover, this is it.” —Audiophile Audition); the string quintets and sextets of Brahms with Toby Appel and David Requiro (“a uniquely detailed, transparent warmth” —Strings Magazine); and the Schumann and Brahms piano quintets with Joyce Yang (“passionate, soulful readings of two pinnacles of the chamber repertory” —The New York Times). Their recording of music of Gershwin and Kern was released in the summer of 2012, following the spring 2012 recording of the clarinet quintet of Brahms and a new quintet from César Cano, in collaboration with Joan Enric Lluna, as well as a disc in collaboration with the San Francisco Choral Artists. Next to be released will be an album of works by Cindy Cox.

The Alexander’s 2009 release of the complete Beethoven cycle was described by Music Web International as performances “uncompromising in power, intensity and spiritual depth,” while Strings Magazine described the set as “a landmark journey through the greatest of all quartet cycles.” The FoghornClassics label released a three-CD set (Homage) of the Mozart quartets dedicated to Haydn in 2004. Foghorn released the a six-CD recording (Fragments) of the complete Shostakovich quartets in 2006 and 2007, and a recording of the complete quartets of Pulitzer prize-winning San Francisco composer, Wayne Peterson,

8 | MondaviArts.org

was released in the spring of 2008. BMG Classics released the quartet’s first recording of Beethoven cycle on its Arte Nova label to tremendous critical acclaim in 1999.

The Alexander String Quartet was formed in New York City in 1981 and captured international attention as the first American quartet to win the London International String Quartet Competition in 1985. The quartet has received honorary degrees from Allegheny College and Saint Lawrence University, and Presidential medals from Baruch College (CUNY).

ROBERT GREENBERGRobert Greenberg was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1954, and has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area since 1978. Greenberg received a B.A. in music, magna cum laude, from Princeton University in 1976. His principal teachers at Princeton were Edward Cone, Daniel Werts, and Carlton Gamer in composition, Claudio Spies, and Paul Lansky in analysis, and Jerry Kuderna in piano. In 1984, Greenberg received a Ph.D. in music composition, with Distinction, from the University of California, Berkeley, where his principal teachers were Andrew Imbrie and Olly Wilson in composition and Richard Felciano in analysis.

Greenberg has composed over fifty works for a wide variety of instrumental and vocal ensembles. Recent performances of his works have taken place in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, England, Ireland, Greece, Italy, and The Netherlands, where his Child’s Play for String Quartet was performed at the Concertgebouw of Amsterdam.

Greenberg has received numerous honors, including being designated an official “Steinway Artist,” three Nicola de Lorenzo Composition Prizes, and three Meet-The-Composer Grants. Notable commissions have been received from the Koussevitzky Foundation in the Library of Congress, the Alexander String Quartet, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, San Francisco Performances, and the XTET ensemble. Greenberg is a board member and an artistic director of COMPOSERS, INC., a composers’ collective/production organization based in San Francisco. His music has been published by Fallen Leaf Press and CPP/Belwin, and recorded on the Innova label.

Greenberg has performed, taught and lectured extensively across North America and Europe. He is currently music historian-in-residence with San Francisco Performances, where he has lectured and performed since 1994. He has served on the faculties of the University of California at Berkeley, California State University East Bay, and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where he chaired the Department of Music History and Literature from 1989-2001 and served as the Director of the Adult Extension Division from 1991-1996. Greenberg has lectured for some of the most prestigious musical and arts organizations in the United States, including the San Francisco Symphony (where for ten years he was host and lecturer for the Symphony’s nationally acclaimed “Discovery Series”), the Chautauqua Institute (where he was the Everett Scholar-in-Residence during the 2006 season), the Ravinia Festival, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the Van Cliburn Foundation, the Nasher Sculpture Center, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, the Hartford Symphony Orchestra, Villa Montalvo, Music@Menlo, and the University of British

Columbia (where he was the Dal Grauer Lecturer in September of 2006). In addition, Greenberg is a sought-after lecturer for businesses and business schools. For many years a member of the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania/Wharton School’s Advanced Management Program, he has spoken for such diverse organizations as S.C. Johnson, Canadian Pacific, Deutsches Bank, the University of California/Haas School of Business Executive Seminar, the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, Harvard Business School Publishing, Kaiser-Permanente, the Strategos Institute, Quintiles Transnational, the Young Presidents’ Organization, the World Presidents’ Organization, and the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco. Greenberg has been profiled in the Wall Street Journal, INC. Magazine, the Times of London, the Los Angeles Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Jose Mercury News, the University of California Alumni Magazine, Princeton Alumni Weekly, and Diablo Magazine. For fifteen years Greenberg was the resident composer and music historian to National Public Radio’s “Weekend All Things Considered” and “Weekend Edition, Sunday” with Liane Hansen.

In February 2003, The Bangor Daily News (Maine) referred to Greenberg as the “Elvis of music history and appreciation,” an appraisal that has given more pleasure than any other.

In May 1993, Greenberg recorded a forty-eight lecture course entitled “How to Listen to and Understand Great Music” for the Teaching Company/Great Courses Program of Chantilly, Virginia. (This course was named in the January, 1996 edition of INC. Magazine as one of “The Nine Leadership Classics You’ve Never Read.”) The Great Courses is the preeminent producer of college level courses-on-media in the United States. Twenty-five further courses, including “Concert Masterworks,” “Bach and the High Baroque,” “The Symphonies of Beethoven,” “How to Listen to and Understand Opera,” “Great Masters,” “The Operas of Mozart,” “The Life and Operas of Verdi,” “The Symphony,” “The Chamber Music of Mozart,” “The Piano Sonatas of Beethoven,” “The Concerto,” “The Fundamentals of Music”, “The String Quartets of Beethoven”, “The Music of Richard Wagner”, and “The Thirty Greatest Orchestral Works” have been recorded since, totaling over 550 lectures. The courses are available on both CD and DVD formats and in book form.

Dr. Greenberg’s book, How to Listen to Great Music, was published by Plume, a division of Penguin Books, in April, 2011.

Greenberg lives with his children Lillian and Daniel, wife Nanci, and a very cool Maine coon (cat) named Teddy in the hills of Oakland, California.

Robert Greenberg is an official Steinway Artist.

MondaviArts.org | 9

ROGER WOODWARD, PIANOYehudi Menuhin discovered 26 year-old Roger Woodward at the UNESCO Jeunesses Musicales, Paris. Within a year, the young artist made his debut at London’s Royal Festival Hall with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and began recording for EMI, Decca, RCA, DG, CPO

and the Universal recording companies. He rose to international prominence in a series of collaborations with Olivier Messiaen, Pierre Boulez, Jean Barraqué, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Iannis Xenakis, Toru Takemitsu, Arvo Pärt, John Cage, Morton Feldman, Harrison Birtwistle, Luciano Berio, Sylvano Bussotti, Horatiu Radulescu, Rolf Gehlhaar, James Dillon, Áskell Másson,Qu Xiaosong, Leo Brouwer and composers from his native Australia —in particular, Richard Meale, Anne Boyd, Ross Edwards, Barry Conyngham and Larry Sitsky.

His performances at La Scala, the Hollywood Bowl, Tiananmen Square, the Odeon of the Herodes Atticus, Lisbon’s Gulbenkian Gardens, the Royal Albert Hall, London, for BBC Promenade Concerts, Le festival d’automne à Paris, La biennale di Venezia,Wien Modern, New York Piano Festival, Edinburgh Festival, Warszawska Jesień, Festival de la Roque d’ Anthéron and, at the invitation of the Russian pianist Sviatoslav Richter, at the celebrated Grange de Meslay, Touraine, have been reviewed as belonging to the highest echelons of pianists with some of his interpretations considered definitive.

Woodward performed at the invitation of conductors such as: Claudio Abbado, Zubin Mehta, Lorin Maazel, Sir Charles Mackerras, Kurt Masur, Charles Dutoit, Pierre Boulez, Edo de Waart, Willem van Otterloo, Sir Andrew Davis, Sir Roger Norrington, Sir John Pritchard, Sir Alexander Gibson, Herbert Bloomstedt, Paavo Bergland, Georg Tintner, Tan Li Hua, Nello Santi, Lamberto Gardelli, Arturo Tamayo, Erich Leinsdorf, Eliahu Inbal, Witold Rowicki, Antoni Wit, Nikolaus Weiss, Moshe Atzmon, Lukas Foss, Arnold Katz, Hiroyuki Iwaki, James Judd, Hans Zender, Walter Susskind, Georges Tzipine et al and with the New York, Los Angeles, Beijing and Israel Philharmonic Orchestras, the Cleveland Orchestra, the GustavMahler Jugendorchester, the Australian Youth Orchestra, the Leipzig Gewandhausorchester, Saarländisches Staatsorchester, the Frankfurt Radio Orchestra and Orchestre de Paris, Berlin Radio Orchester, NDR Sinfonie Orchester, and the six London orchestras as well as with the NZSO and Australian State orchestras.

Memorable collaborations were with Graeme Murphy, Janet Vernon and the Sydney Dance Company on Xenakis’ Kraanerg in which Woodward directed a series of 25 performances at the Sydney Opera House. His direction of Kraanerg was declared one of the best recordings of the year by the London music critics. He performed with the Budapest and Prague Chamber Orchestras, with the Arditti, Alexander, Edinburgh, JACK (New York), Tokyo and Australian String Quartets. He toured with the Vienna Trio, and with the musicians Ivry Gitlis, Wanda Wilkomirska, Jassen Todorov, Philippe Hirschhorn, Ilya Grubert, Winfried Rademacher, Federico Agostini, James Creitz, Rohan de Saram, Nathan Waks, Synergy Percussion, Cecil Taylor (in Portugal, France and the U.K.) and Frank Zappa. He worked on a wide variety of projects with the British-French musicologist Arthur Hedley, the American

musicologists HC Robbins Landon, Charles Rosen and the British analyst Richard Toop.

His recordings have earned him widespread critical acclaim with prestigious awards including the Goethe prize and Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik, by the German critics; the Ritmo prize by the Spanish critics and Diapason d’or by the French critics. His performances and recordings of J.S.Bach’s Das Wohltemperierte Clavier and Partitas, of the complete Beethoven piano sonatas and concertos and works of Mozart, Chopin, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Debussy, Bartók, Schoenberg, Skryabin, Rakhmaninov, Prokofiev, Shostakovich (24 Preludes and Fugues), Feldman, Xenakis, Barraqué, Takemitsu, Qu Xiaosong, Otte and recordings of works by many Australian composers, received exceptional reviews.

Woodward is a composer and conductor who directed festivals in Italy, France, Austria the UK, Australia. He is currently Professor of Keyboard Performance at the California State University in San Francisco where he was appointed founding director of the School of Music in 2002. He is published by HarperCollins, the Pendragon and Greenway Press (New York). For the past ten years he has recorded for Celestial Harmonies, Universal and ABC Classics. He completed his early studies at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music with Alexander Sverjensky (a pupil of Alexander Glazunov and Sergei Rakhmaninov), then with Zbigniew Drzewiecki at the Chopin National Academy of Music, Warsaw. At the beginning of his career (in 1963) he founded the Sydney International Piano Competition and directed it until it was permanently funded from 1976. Between 1990 and 2001 he founded and directed the Sydney Spring International Festival of New Music. During his entire professional life he worked with underprivileged children and with children throughout regional Australia. Every year he gives master classes in many different parts of the world and regularly appears on the juries of U.S. and international piano competitions. He performed the complete works of Chopin from memory for the Sydney Festival and on twelve occasions, Beethoven’s complete piano sonata cycle.

The artist was awarded many distinguished honours and prizes including France’s Chevalier des arts et des lettres, the Polish Order of Merit (Commander Class), the Polish Order of Solidarity, the Polish Gloria Artis (gold class) and the Order of the British Empire. He is a Companion of the Order of Australia, recipient of the Australian Centenary Medal and in 1997, was designated a National Living Treasure by the Australian National Trust.

Over the past few months Roger Woodward performed works by Beethoven and Robert Greenberg with the Alexander String Quartet at the Herbst Theatre, San Francisco and Mondavi Center, UC Davis. He works on a regular basis with the Alexander Quartet with whom he recorded Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann, Dvořák, Shostakovich and in February, the premiere of the Greenberg Piano Quintet. In April he performed two sold- out recitals at the San Francisco Herbst Theatre of late-Beethoven piano sonatas. Last month he performed in Hamburg and Oldenburg works by Chopin, Bach and the complete Debussy Etudes before performing a programme of Brahms and Xenakis with the Canadian clarinetist Lori Freedman and celebrated cellist Rohan de Saram. In July he premiered a new work in Melbourne by the young Australian composer Andrew Batt -Rawden.

10 | MondaviArts.org

Documents

15-16 Alexander String Quartet Program