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presents…

INON BARNATAN | Piano 

CALIDORE STRING QUARTET Jeffrey Myers, violin Jeremy Berry, viola Ryan Meehan, violin Estelle Choi, cello

Tuesday, January 29, 2019 | 7:30pmHerbst Theatre

J.S. BACH Selections from The Art of Fugue, BWV 1080 Contrapunctus 1 Contrapunctus 2 Contrapunctus 4 Contrapunctus 8 Contrapunctus 9 Canon alla Ottava Contrapunctus 14

(Calidore String Quartet)

Piano Concerto in D minor, BWV 1052 Allegro Adagio Allegro

INTERMISSION

Piano Concerto in G minor, BWV 1058 (no tempo marking) Andante Allegro assai

program continues on next page ->▸

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Piano Concerto in A Major, BWV 1055 Allegro Larghetto Allegro ma non tanto

Piano Concerto in F minor, BWV 1056 (no tempo marking) Largo Presto

This presentation is generously supported by Camilla & George Smith, Jeanne Newman, and Schoenberg Family Law

Inon Barnatan and Calidore String Quartet are represented by Opus 3 Artists470 Park Avenue South, 9th Floor North, New York, NY 10016 opus3artists.com

Hamburg Steinway Model D, Pro Piano, San Francisco

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ARTIST PROFILES

San Francisco Performances presents Inon Barnatan for the second time; he first ap-peared in recital with cellist Alisa Weilerstein. Calidore String Quartet makes its San Fran-cisco Performances debut this evening.

“One of the most admired pianists of his generation” (New York Times), Inon Barna-tan is celebrated for his poetic sensibil-ity, musical intelligence, and consummate artistry. He is the recipient of both a pres-tigious 2009 Avery Fisher Career Grant and Lincoln Center’s 2015 Martin E. Segal Award, which recognizes “young artists of exceptional accomplishment.” He was recently named the new Music Director of the La Jolla Music Society SummerFest, be-ginning in 2019.

A regular soloist with many of the world’s foremost orchestras and conduc-tors, the Israeli pianist recently served three seasons as the inaugural Artist-in-Association of the New York Philharmon-ic. This season he plays Beethoven with Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie Orchestra led by Alan Gilbert, Mozart with the Aus-tralian Chamber Orchestra in New York’s Alice Tully Hall, and Rachmaninov with the Pittsburgh Symphony and Israel Phil-harmonic, again led by Gilbert. In recent seasons he debuted at the BBC Proms, with the London and Helsinki Philharmon-ics, and with the Chicago, Baltimore, Fort Worth, Indianapolis, Nashville, San Diego, and Seattle Symphonies.

Also a sought-after chamber musician, this season Barnatan collaborates with the Dover, Calidore, and St. Lawrence String Quartets, performing with the latter in Carnegie Hall, and tours the U.S. and Eu-rope with his frequent collaborator, cel-

list Alisa Weilerstein, along with violin-ist Sergey Khachatryan and percussionist Colin Currie. He makes his recital debut in the International Piano Series at London’s Southbank Centre, and plays additional recitals in the Seattle Symphony’s Bena-roya Hall and Boston’s Celebrity Series, where he has been appearing in various configurations since 2008. His passion for contemporary music has seen him com-mission and perform many works by living composers, including premieres of pieces by Thomas Adès, Sebastian Currier, Avner Dorman, Alan Fletcher, Joseph Hallman, Alasdair Nicolson, Andrew Norman, and Matthias Pintscher.

“A born Schubertian” (Gramophone), Bar-natan’s critically acclaimed discography includes Avie and Bridge recordings of the Austrian composer’s solo piano works, as well as Darknesse Visible, which scored a coveted place on the New York Times’ “Best of 2012” list. His most recent release is a live recording of Messiaen’s 90-minute masterpiece Des canyons aux étoiles (“From the Canyons to the Stars”), in which he played the formidable solo piano part at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. His 2015 Decca Classics release, Rachmaninov & Chopin: Cello Sonatas with Alisa Wei-lerstein, earned rave reviews on both sides of the Atlantic.

The Calidore String Quartet has been praised by the New York Times for its “deep reserves of virtuosity and irrepressible dramatic instinct” and by the Los Ange-les Times for its balance of “intellect and expression.” The Quartet has enjoyed an impressive number of accolades, includ-

ing a 2018 Avery Fisher Career Grant, and the  2017 Lincoln Center Emerging Artist Award. Calidore made international head-lines as winner of the  $100,000 Grand Prize  of the 2016 M-Prize International Chamber Music Competition,  the largest prize for chamber music in the world. The quartet was also the first North American ensemble to win the Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship  and was  named  BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artists,  an honor that brings with it recordings, international radio broadcasts and appearances in Brit-ain’s most prominent venues and festivals.

Within two years of their founding in 2010, Calidore won grand prizes in virtu-ally all the major U.S. chamber music com-petitions, including the Fischoff, Coleman, Chesapeake, and Yellow Springs competi-tions and captured top prizes at the 2012 ARD Munich International String Quartet Competition and Hamburg International Chamber Music Competition.

The Calidore String Quartet regularly performs in prestigious venues throughout North America, Europe and Asia. In 2018/19 Calidore returns to Wigmore Hall and Lincoln Center and will make its debut on major series in Munich, Copenhagen, the Netherlands, Atlanta, Toronto, San Francis-co and Denver. They continue to collaborate in concerts with the Emerson String Quar-tet as well as artists such as the pianist Inon Barnatan, violinist Arnaud Sussmann, vio-list Matthew Lipman, and oboist Cristina Gómez Godoy. They presented the world premiere of Pulitzer-prize winner Caroline Shaw’s newest string quartet Three Essays at the BBC Proms and will continue to per-

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form it throughout the season. They also perform the world premiere of a new work by Marc-Anthony Turnage at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.

Resilience, Calidore’s debut album for Signum Records was released October 2018 and includes quartets by Mendelssohn, Prokofiev, Janáček and Golijov. Their other commercial recordings include quartets by Tchaikovsky and Mendelssohn, record-ed live in concert at Music@Menlo Fes-tival; Serenade: Music from the Great War, featuring music for String Quartet by Hin-demith, Milhaud and Stravinsky, Ernst Toch and Jacques de la Presle on the French label Editions Hortus; and the quartet’s 2015 debut recording of quartets by Men-delssohn and Haydn.

The Calidore serves as Artists-in-Resi-dence at the University of Delaware, Univer-sity of Toronto and the University of Michi-gan. 2018–19 is the Calidore’s third year in residence with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s The Bowers Program.

Using an amalgamation of “California” and “doré” (French for “golden”), the en-semble’s name represents a reverence for the diversity of culture and the strong sup-port it received from its home of origin, Los Angeles, California, the “golden state.”

PROGRAM NOTES

Selections from The Art of Fugue, BWV 1080

JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH(1685–1750)

About 1740 Bach—then 55 and beginning to lose his sight—began to take stock of his career and redirect his energies. He put some of his earlier music in final form, and he felt a renewed interest in what had always been a consuming passion: contrapuntal music and its possibilities. In Berlin in 1747 Bach played before Frederick the Great, who in turn gave Bach a theme and asked him to extempo-rize a six-part fugue on it. Bach improvised a three-part fugue for Frederick on the spot and then—back in Leipzig—took that “royal” theme through 13 further contrapuntal ex-tensions, which he presented to the king as A Musical Offering.

But Bach’s interest in exploring the con-trapuntal possibilities of a single theme be-gan well beyond the visit to Berlin. About 1740 Bach had begun a lengthy work con-sisting of a series of fugues and canons based on one theme. His work on this proj-

ect continued across the next decade, even during the years of his increasing blindness, and the project would remain unfinished—at the time of his death Bach was working on a triple fugue that was left incomplete. After his death, all the pieces based on this one theme were gathered by his son Carl Philipp Emanuel and published in 1751 under the name The Art of Fugue, a title the composer probably never heard or imagined.

In The Art of Fugue Bach preferred the title Contrapunctus—“counterpoint”—to Fugue, and he arranged the fugues in a se-quence of increasing complexity. Bach’s fundamental theme seems simplicity it-self: in D minor, it is only four measures long, and—even at its steady tempo—it gives the impression of increasing speed, as the half-notes of the opening measures give way to quarters in the third and to eighths in the final measure. Contrapunc-tus I introduces Bach’s fundamental fugue subject in its simplest form, worked out here without countertheme. Contrapunc-tus II is based on the same subject, though Bach increases textural complexities by dotting the rhythms of the eighth notes. Contrapunctus IV has the subject in inver-sion, here developed with unusual har-monic freedom.

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Contrapunctus VIII is the longest and per-haps most impressive section of The Art of the Fugue. It is a triple fugue based on three sharply varied subjects, the last of which is an inversion and variation of the original theme, and Bach works out all three sub-jects over the long span of this Contrapunc-tus, which magically combines all three subjects at the close. By contrast, the brief Contrapunctus IX is a spirited double fugue on a new theme. As it progresses it incor-porates as its second subject the original fugue theme, combined at the interval of a twelfth, hence alla Duodecima.

Along with the different fugues, Bach composed a number of canons, in which the subsequent entries of the subject are sometimes at different intervals, some-times set in contrary motion or augmen-tation. The Canon alla Ottava is a canon in 9/16 in which the subsequent entries are at the interval of an octave.

Contrapunctus XIV was left unfinished at the time of Bach’s death. By this time almost totally blind, he composed by dictating to an amanuensis. This fugue was to be the culmi-nation of this project, but it does not make use of the fundamental theme of The Art of Fugue. Instead, it was to be a massive triple fugue: a lengthy working-out of the first sub-ject, a second subject that is combined with the first as it is worked out, and a third sec-tion built in part on a subject whose notes are based on the letters of Bach’s last name (B-flat/A/C/B-natural). Just at the point at which he combined these subjects (at mea-sure 239), Bach—aging, weak, and blind—gave up work on this fugue and dictated (to his son Carl Philipp Emanuel) the chorale prelude Vor deinen Thron tret ich hiermit. Vari-ous musicians, including Donald Francis Tovey and Ferruccio Busoni, have completed the fugue on their own, and Contrapunctus XIV is sometimes performed in one of these “completed” versions, while other perform-ers break off abruptly at measure 239.

Piano Concerto in D minor, BWV 1052

In April 1729 Bach was named director of the Leipzig Collegium Musicum, an en-semble of student, amateur, and profes-sional instrumentalists who rehearsed weekly and performed orchestral music. The orchestra gave public concerts on Wednesday afternoons from 4 to 6 in a coffee garden called Grimmische’s Thor during the warm months and inside Zim-merman’s coffeehouse on Friday evenings from 8 to 10 during the winter.

As director, Bach was responsible for choosing the music to be performed, and he quickly discovered that he needed new key-board concertos, probably for his sons Wil-helm Friedemann and Carl Philipp Emanu-el to perform with the orchestra. He turned to his library and recycled eight concertos he had written much earlier—often for other instruments—by arranging them as keyboard concertos for the Collegium. The Concerto in D minor is one of the works Bach transcribed from an earlier version. Evi-dence suggests that in its original version this concerto was for violin and may have been written as early as Bach’s tenure as or-ganist in Weimar (1708–17) or while he was music director for Prince Leopold in Cöthen (1717–23). Working from the keyboard tran-scription, scholars have been able to recon-struct the original version for violin.

In its final form, Bach would have thought of this as a clavier concerto—a work for such keyboard instruments as harpsichord or clavichord—though early in the 19th cen-tury Ignaz Moscheles performed the Con-certo in D minor on the piano in London, and it is often performed today on that instru-ment, which has significantly more power and flexibility than Bach’s harpsichord.

The Allegro bursts to life with a hard-edged ritornello that will be tossed antipho-nally between the violin sections over the span of this movement. The piano makes its distinctive entrance with a passage full of characteristic 32nd note runs, and listeners will recognize in the keyboard part a num-ber of figurations that suggest this music’s origin as a violin concerto. Bach was no be-liever in virtuosity for its own sake, but at the center of this movement he does write out what amounts to a cadenza for the solo-ist—a series of brilliant runs—and provides further solo passages before the movement comes to its close on a firm reprise of the ritornello. The expressive Adagio moves to G minor, and Bach opens with a long introduc-tion for the orchestra in octaves before the soloist enters with quite different music—disconsolate and intricate—that is eventu-ally taken up by the orchestra. The conclud-ing Allegro returns to D minor. Its ritornello is full of energy, while the solo passages en-compass a wide range of expression—some-times powerful, sometimes delicate.

Piano Concerto in G minor, BWV 1058

Audiences will recognize the Concerto in G minor as a transcription of Bach’s Violin Con-certo No. 1 in A minor, composed about 1720

when the composer was music director in Cöthen. Bach transposed the original down one full step, from A minor to G minor, when he made the keyboard transcription.

The opening movement is animated (though the movement lacks a tempo marking, it is clearly some form of Al-legro): the upward leap of a fourth at the beginning recurs throughout, giving the movement its rhythmic energy and for-ward impulse. Against vigorous orches-tral accompaniment, the soloist enters in a more lyric voice on material derived directly from the orchestral exposition, and throughout the movement soloist and orchestra exchange and mutually extend this material.

The Andante belongs almost entirely to the keyboard: here the orchestra is limited to a bare ostinato accompaniment. But if the accompaniment is simple, the arch-ing cantilena is ornate, unfolding in long, lyric lines high above the orchestra. This movement is the expressive center of the concerto, and—despite the B-flat Major to-nality—its tone is dark and intense.

Bach aims for brilliance in the final movement: his marking is Allegro assai—“Very fast”—and its 9/8 meter and danc-ing energy give it some resemblance to the gigue. After a spirited orchestral in-troduction, the soloist comes sailing into the orchestral texture. Bach’s evolution of the opening material is remarkable: as the orchestra hurtles brusquely along far below it, the piano seems to fly high, trans-forming this simple material into music of grace and beauty.

Piano Concerto in A Major, BWV 1055

Evidence suggests that the Piano Con-certo in A Major was originally composed for oboe d’amore and may date from Bach’s years in Weimar. Bach’s transcription of this concerto for harpsichord has been tentatively dated as coming from 1738 or 1739, during his final seasons with the Col-legium Musicum. The key of A Major is a bright one, and this concerto—particu-larly in its buoyant outer movements—is full of sunshine and energy. The Allegro opens with the orchestra’s sturdy ritornello, and from the first instant the piano is part of this texture, expanding the orchestra’s line with music of its own. Bach marks the Larghetto, which moves to F-sharp minor, alla siciliana, and the music does preserve some of the swaying rhythm associated

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Barnatan Notes continued from page 5

with that old dance form. Here, however, the orchestra functions as a sort of ostina-to accompaniment to the piano, which has the melodic interest and plays through-out. The concluding Allegro ma non tanto returns to the manner (and the key) of the opening movement and brings the concer-to to a sparkling close.

Piano Concerto in F minor, BWV 1056

The Concerto in F minor may originally have been a violin concerto, probably in G minor: Bach customarily transposed his violin con-certos down a whole step when arranging them for keyboard. The most convincing ev-idence that this was originally a violin con-certo comes in the second movement, where a cantabile melody is spun out over pizzicato accompaniment from the string orchestra—so beautiful and lyric a melody seems to cry out for the sustained sound of a violin rather than the (inevitably) percussive sound of a

keyboard instrument. This movement (only 21 measures long) has become famous on its own: Bach himself used it in his Cantata No. 156, “Ich steht mit einem Fuss in Grabe” (“I Stand with One Foot in the Grave”), and this lovely music has been heard in numeous arrange-ments over the last two and a half centuries.

Bach frames it with two fast move-ments. The opening movement is without tempo marking. Its rhythmically vigorous ritornello, heard immediately, dominates this movement, while the concluding Presto is full of syncopated beats and sharp accents.

—Program notes by Eric Bromberger

AS EXPLORED BY THE

Alexander String Quartet, mezzo soprano Kindra Scharich, pianist Jeffrey LaDeur, AND

musicologist Robert Greenberg

Join us for our 2019 workshop/festival/retreat — an exploration that extends from Schubert’s early songs and string quartets to his mature masterpieces such as the C major cello Quintet and the song cycle “Winterreise.”

Designed for both playing and non- playing chamber music enthusiasts, this 3-day residential event will offer all participants a chance to understand the artistic and historical significance of Schubert’s song and chamber music literature. String quartet musicians will have an opportunity to receive coach ing and perform selected Schubert works.

A rich program of yoga, meditation, healthy food preparation and preventive medicine, designed to increase body awareness and enhance overall health, will compliment the cultural activities.

For information and an application, visit:apolloacademy.org

Apollo Academy for Health and Humanism

September 5 –8, 2019Ratna Ling Retreat Center S O N O M A C O U N T Y, C A L I F O R N I A

A P O L L O A C A D E M Y F O R H E A L T H A N D H U M A N I S M P R E S E N T S

A H E A L T H A N D C H A M B E R M U S I C W O R K S H O P • F E S T I V A L • R E T R E A T

A Schubertiade For TodayChamber Music and Songs of Franz Schubert (1797 –1828)