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presents…

PAVEL HAAS QUARTETVeronika Jarůšková | Violin Jiří Kabát | ViolaMarek Zwiebel | Violin Peter Jarůšek | Cello

BORIS GILTBURG | PianoTuesday, March 10, 2020 | 7:30pmHerbst Theatre

MARTINŮ String Quartet No. 2, H. 150 Moderato. Andante. Allegro vivace Andante; Moderato Allegro; Scherzando

BARTÓK String Quartet No. 4, Sz. 91 Allegro Prestissimo, con sordino Non troppo lento Allegretto pizzicato Allegro molto

INTERMISSION

DVOŘÁK Piano Quintet in A Major, Opus 81 Allegro, ma non tanto Dumka: Andante con moto Scherzo (Furiant): Molto vivace Finale: Allegro

This program is made possible in part by the generous support of James and Kathleen Leak

Discography for Pavel Haas Quartet: SupraphonDiscography for Boris Giltburg: Naxos, Orchid Classics, Supraphon

The Pavel Haas Quartet and Boris Giltburg are represented by Arts Management Group, Inc.130 West 57th St., New York, NY 10019 artsmg.com

Hamburg Steinway Model D, Pro Piano, San Francisco

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ARTIST PROFILESSan Francisco Performances presents Pavel Haas Quartet for the fifth time; the Quartet made its SF Performances debut in April 2011.

Boris Giltburg makes his SF Performances debut with this engagement.

The Pavel Haas Quartet has been called “the world’s most exciting string quartet” (Gramophone) and is revered across the globe for its richness of timbre, infectious passion and intuitive rapport. Performing at the world’s most prestigious concert halls and having won five Gramophone and nu-merous other awards for their recordings, the Quartet is firmly established as one of the world’s foremost chamber ensembles.

In the 2019–20 season the Quartet will return to major venues including Tonhalle Zürich, Wigmore Hall London, Philhar-monie Luxembourg, Stockholm Konser-thuset, Società del Quartetto di Milano and festivals such as the Schubertiade. They will return to Amsterdam Muziek-gebouw to perform three concerts at the String Quartet Biennale in January 2020 and will embark on their first tour to Israel with performances in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa. Further tours will be to the U.S. and Canada as well as to Asia, where they will return to NCPA Beijing and give their debuts in Hong Kong and Singapore.

The Pavel Haas Quartet records exclusive-ly for Supraphon and their latest recording of Shostakovich String Quartets Nos. 2, 7 and 8 was released in October 2019. For their re-

cent disc of Dvořák’s Piano Quintet No. 2 and String Quintet No. 3 with Boris Giltburg and their former member, Pavel Nikl, they were awarded their fifth Gramophone Chamber Music Award in 2018. Diapason d’Or chose the disc as Album of the Month and com-mented: “It is difficult to overestimate their expressive intensity and opulent sound production.” The Quartet received further Gramophone Chamber Music Awards for their recordings of Smetana’s String Quar-tets, Schubert’s String Quartet Death and the Maiden and the String Quintet with Danjulo Ishizaka, Janáček’s Quartet No 2 ‘Intimate Let-ters’ and Haas’s Quartet No.2 ‘From the Monkey Mountains’, as well as Dvořák’s String Quar-tets No.12 ‘American’ and No.13, for which the Quartet was also awarded the most coveted prize, Gramophone Recording of the Year in 2011. The Sunday Times commented: “Their account of the ‘American’ Quartet belongs alongside the greatest performances on disc.” Further accolades include BBC Music Magazine Awards and the Diapason d’Or de l’Année in 2010 for their recording of Proko-fiev String Quartets Nos 1 & 2.

In spring 2005, the Quartet won the Paolo Borciani competition in Italy. Further high-lights early on in their career were the nom-ination as ECHO Rising Stars in 2007, the participation in the BBC New Generation Artists scheme between 2007–2009 and the Special Ensemble Scholarship the Borletti-Buitoni Trust awarded them in 2010.

The Quartet is based in Prague and studied with the late Milan Škampa, the legendary violist of the Smetana Quar-

tet. They take their name from the Czech composer Pavel Haas (1899–1944) who was imprisoned at Theresienstadt in 1941 and tragically died at Auschwitz three years later. His legacy includes three wonderful string quartets.

The young Moscow-born, Israeli pianist Boris Giltburg is lauded across the globe as a deeply sensitive, insightful and compel-ling interpreter. He has appeared with many leading orchestras worldwide, such as Phil-harmonia Orchestra, London Philharmonic, NHK Symphony, Israel Philharmonic, WDR Koeln, Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie, Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Helsinki Philhar-monic, St. Petersburg Philharmonic, Balti-more, Nashville and Seattle Symphonies. He made his BBC Proms debut in 2010, his Australia debut in 2017 (with the Adelaide and Tasmanian Symphony Orchestras) and has frequently toured to South America and China. He has played recitals in leading venues such as Hamburg Elbphilharmonie, Carnegie Hall, London Southbank Centre, Auditorium Radio France, Toppan Hall To-kyo and Shanghai Oriental Arts Centre.

To celebrate the Beethoven anniversary in 2020, Giltburg embarks upon a unique proj-ect to learn all the sonatas across the year, filming and blogging about the process as he goes, and appearing on BBC TV. He is record-ing the complete Beethoven piano concerti for Naxos with the Royal Liverpool Phil-harmonic and Vasily Petrenko, for release beginning in autumn 2019; and he plays all the concerti in three days with the Brussels Philharmonic at the Flagey Piano Festival.

Other highlights of 2019–20 include per-formances of the Rachmaninov Preludes

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at Bozar, Wigmore and for his debut in the Master Pianists series at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw; he also plays recitals at the festivals of Rheingau, Dresden, Dvořák Prague and Liszt Raiding. He is resident art-ist with the Valencia Symphony across the season, and also returns to the Oslo Philhar-monic, Netherlands Philharmonic, Hong Kong Philharmonic and Utah Symphony.

He has a close relationship with the Pav-el Haas Quartet, winning a Gramophone Award 2018 for their Dvořák Piano Quintet on Supraphon, and joining them in 2019–20 at Wigmore, Bristol and Cambridge. They will also embark on a U.S. and North Ameri-ca tour, performing in Kansas City, Salt Lake City, Vancouver, Quebec and Montreal.

In 2018 he won Best Soloist Recording (20/21st century) at the inaugural Opus Klassik Awards for his Naxos recording of Rachmaninoff’s 2nd Piano Concerto with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and Carlos Miguel Prieto, coupled with the Etudes-Tableaux. He won a Diapason d’Or for his first concerto recording, the Shostakovich concerti with Vasily Petren-ko and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, coupled with his own arrangement of Shostakovich’s 8th String Quartet; and his Schumann and Beethoven solo discs on Naxos have been similarly well received. His 2012 Orchid release of the Prokofiev So-natas was shortlisted for the critics’ award at the Classical Brits and his Rachmaninoff Preludes and Liszt Transcendental Etudes at-tracted rave reviews.

Born in 1984 in Moscow, Boris Giltburg moved to Tel Aviv at an early age, studying with his mother and then with Arie Vardi. He went on to win numerous awards, nota-bly the second (and audience) prize at the Rubinstein in 2011, and in 2013 he won first prize at the Queen Elisabeth Competition, catapulting his career to a new level. In 2015 he began a long-term recording plan with Naxos Records.

Boris is an avid amateur photographer and blogger, writing about classical music for a non-specialist audience.

PROGRAM NOTES

String Quartet No. 2, H.150

BOHUSLAV MARTINŮ (1890–1959)

Strong-minded from the start, Martinů was expelled from conservatory studies in Prague for recalcitrance, and he sup-

ported himself by playing second violin in the Czech Philharmonic for five years after World War I. But Martinů came realize that he could not get the training he needed in Czechoslovakia, so in 1923 he moved to Paris. Martinů composed his Second String Quartet in 1925 during a vacation trip back to his home town of Polička in Czechoslo-vakia—he is reported to have composed this music in only 18 days.

The String Quartet No. 2 is a compact work—in three movements, it spans only about 20 minutes. Some of the character-istics of Martinů’s mature music are al-ready in evidence here, including a very high energy level, virtuoso demands on the performers, and a harmonic complex-ity that—while basically diatonic—often puts traditional harmonies under stress. Martinů’s movements often fall into sec-tions at different tempos. The Moderato (Andante) opens with dignified introduc-tion that Martinu stresses should be tran-quillo. The mood changes suddenly at the Allegro vivace, which rips ahead on spiky, energetic music. The mood changes com-pletely with the central movement. The Andante begins in a stillness unsettled by slight dissonances. Curiously, it is the sec-ond violin that leads the way here, its low-er-register melodic emerging from within the texture of the quartet. An abrasive cen-tral episode leads to a return of the open-ing material, and the second violin draws this subdued music into silence. Out of that silence the finale explodes to life, and this movement leaps between episodes at different speeds. At the center of this movement comes a surprise: the music comes to a stop, and the first violin is giv-en a long and difficult cadenza. The other instruments return, and the Second String Quartet races to a buoyant conclusion.

String Quartet No. 4, Sz.91

BÉLA BARTÓK (1881–1945)

Bartók’s Fourth String Quartet of 1928 is a work of extraordinary concentration. Over its brief span, materials that at first seem unpromising are transformed into music of breathtaking virtuosity and expressive-ness. Bartók’s biographer Halsey Stevens suggests that the Fourth “is a quartet al-most without themes, with only motives and their development,” and one of the most remarkable things about the Fourth Quartet is that virtually all of it is derived from a simple rising-and-falling figure

announced by the cello moments into the first movement. Bartók takes this six-note thematic cell through a stunning se-quence of changes that will have it appear in an almost infinite variety of rhythms, harmonies, and permutations. So techni-cal a description makes this music sound cerebral and abstract. In fact, the Fourth Quartet offers some of the most exciting music Bartók ever wrote.

The Fourth Quartet is one of the earliest examples of Bartók’s fascination with arch form, an obsession that would in some ways shape the works he composed over the rest of his life. There had been hints of symmetrical formal structures earlier, but the Fourth Quartet is the first explicit and unmistakable statement of that form—the form here is palindromic. At the center of this five-movement quartet is a long slow movement, which Bartók described as “the kernel” of the entire work. Surrounding that central movement are two scherzos (“the inner shell”) built on related mate-rial, and the entire quartet is anchored on its powerful opening and closing move-ments (“the outer shell”), which also share thematic material.

The Allegro opens with an aggressive tissue of terraced entrances, and beneath them, almost unobtrusively, the cello stamps out the quartet’s fundamental the-matic cell in the seventh measure. This tight chromatic cell will then be taken through an infinite sequence of expan-sions, from this pithy initial statement through inversions, expansions to more melodic shapes, and finally to a close on a massive restatement of that figure.

If the outer movements are marked by a seething dynamism, the three interior movements take us into a different world altogether. Bartók marks the second move-ment Prestissimo, con sordino and mutes the instruments throughout. The central sec-tion rushes through a cascade of changing sonorities—glissandos, pizzicatos, grainy sul ponticello. This movement comes to a stunning close: glissandos swoop upward and the music vanishes on delicate har-monics.

At the quartet’s center lies one of Bartók’s night-music movements. At the beginning Bartók asks the three upper voices—the accompaniment—to alternate playing without and with vibrato: the icy stillness of the former contrasts with the warmer texture of vibrato. Beneath these subtly shifting sonorities, the cello has a long and passionate recitative that has its roots in Hungarian folk music.

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The fourth movement is played entirely pizzicato. This use of pizzicato takes many forms in this movement: the snapped “Bartók pizzicato,” arpeggiated chords, strummed chords, glissandos.

Brutal chords launch the final move-ment. This is the counterpart to the open-ing movement, but that opening Allegro is now counterbalanced by this even faster Allegro molto. Quickly the two violins out-line the main theme, a further variation of the opening cell, which returns in its original form as this music dances along its sizzling way. As if to remind us how far we have come, the quartet concludes with a powerful restatement of that figure.

Piano Quintet in A Major, Opus 81ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK (1841–1904)

In the summer of 1887 Antonín Dvořák took his large family to their summer home at Vysoka, in the forests and fields about forty miles south of Prague. It was a very good time for the 46-year-old compos-er. After years of struggle and poverty, he suddenly found himself famous: his Sla-

vonic Dances were being played around the world, and his Seventh Symphony had been premiered to instant acclaim in London two years earlier. Dvořák was usually one of the fastest of composers, able to com-plete a work quickly once he had sketched it. That August he began a new work, a Piano Quintet, but this one took him some time—he did not complete it until well into October, and it was premiered in Prague the following January. Dvořák was now at the height of his powers, and the Quintet shows the hand of a master at every in-stant—this is tremendously vital music, full of fire and soaring melodies.

The cello introduces the opening idea of the Allegro, ma non tanto. This long melody—Dvořák marks it espressivo—suddenly explodes with energy and is extended at length before the viola intro-duces the sharply-pulsed second theme. In sonata form, this movement ranges from a dreamy delicacy to thunderous tuttis, and sometimes those changes are sudden.

The second movement is a dumka, a form derived from an old Slavonic song of la-ment. Dvořák makes a striking contrast of sonorities at the opening episode. For the first 40 measures, Dvořák keeps both the pianist’s hands in treble clef, where the

piano’s sound is glassy and delicate; far below, the viola’s C-string resonates darkly against this, and the rich, deep sound of the viola will be central to this movement.

Dvořák gives the brief Molto vivace the title Furiant, an old Bohemian dance based on shifting meters, but the 3/4 meter re-mains unchanged throughout this move-ment, which is a sort of fast waltz in ABA form. The finale’s amiable opening idea—introduced by the first violin after a mut-tering, epigrammatic beginning—domi-nates the movement. Dvořák even offers a brisk fugato on this tune, introduced by the second violin, as part of the develop-ment. The full-throated coda, which drives to a conclusion of almost symphonic pro-portions, is among the many pleasures of one of this composer’s finest scores.

Program notes by Eric Bromberger