Mozart En Route for Violin, Viola and Cello

Aaron Jay Kernis (born in 1960)

Aaron Jay Kernis was born in Philadelphia on January 15, 1960, and started teaching himself piano and violin at age twelve; he began composing soon thereafter. He took his professional training at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (with John Adams), the Manhattan School of Music (Elias Tanenbaum and Charles Wuorinen), Yale (Morton Subotnik, Bernard Rands and, principally, Jacob Druckman) and the American Academy in Rome; he was appointed to the faculty of the Yale School of Music in 2003. Since his Dream of the Morning Sky was played by the New York Philharmonic in 1983, Kernis has created an impressive catalog: significant scores for orchestra (three symphonies, New Era Dance, Invisible Mosaic III, Musica Celestis, a double concerto for guitar and violin, a concerto for English horn titled Colored Field); numerous compositions for varied chamber ensembles; pieces for piano, organ and accordion; and many works for solo voices and for chorus. He was Composer-in-Residence with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra from 1993 to 1996; he began a similar post with the Minnesota Orchestra in September 1998. In 1998, Kernis won the Pulitzer Prize for his String Quartet No. 2, "Musica Instrumentalis"; his most recent recognition is the University of Louisville’s prestigious Grawemeyer Award for 2002 for the cello concerto Colored Field. Among his other distinctions are the Stoeger Prize from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Rome Prize, a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Bearns Prize, a New York Foundation for the Arts Award, a Tippett Award, an Award in Music from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and awards from BMI and ASCAP, as well as commissions from the New York Philharmonic, Baltimore Symphony, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Aspen Music Festival, the Koussevitzky, Naumburg and Fromm foundations, American Public Radio and others. He fulfilled commissions for works for two significant occasions in the year 2000: one for the centennial celebrations of the Philadelphia Orchestra; the other, from Michael Eisner and the Disney Corporation, observing the arrival of the new millennium. In February 2000, his "permanently installed ambient music" for the Rose Center for Earth and Space at New York’s Museum of Natural History, titled Cosmic Cycle, was first heard. In 1995, Kernis signed an exclusive recording contract with Decca/London, which has released several highly acclaimed albums of his music. His recent works include Color Wheel, commissioned for the Philadelphia Orchestra’s opening concert at the new Kimmel Center on December 15, 2001. Kernis’ current commissions include works for his residency with the Minnesota Orchestra, a toy piano concerto for Margaret Leng Tan, and a new opera for Santa Fe Opera.

Kernis’ Mozart En Route was commissioned by the Bravo! Colorado Festival in 1991 to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the death of Mozart. Of it, the composer notes, "Mozart wrote concerning a journey from Salzburg to Munich: ‘For I assure you that none of us managed to sleep for a moment the whole night through. Why, that carriage jolted the very souls out of our bodies! And the seats! Hard as a rock! After we left Wasserburg, I really thought I would never get my behind to Munich in one piece! It became quite sore and no doubt was fiery red. For two whole stages, I sat with my hands dug into the upholstery and my behind suspended in the air. But enough of this; it is all over now, though it will serve as a warning to go on foot rather than to ride in a mail coach.’ (November 8, 1780)

"Today, means of transportation become speedier and more comfortable every year. Imagine if Mozart was brought to visit America in 1991 and sped from place to place, concert hall to Grand Ole Opry, smoky bar to chamber music festival, via the fastest and most high-tech form of travel possible: namely, the type of particle transmission and re-assemblage found in Star Trek. In the blink of an eye, Wolfgang would be brought face to face with the diverse forms and sounds of music found here, from serious to popular with much on the fringes and in between. He would probably be amazed at the number of musical styles in simultaneous circulation, but surprised at the often great gulf between ‘serious’ and ‘popular’ musics, which during his time commingled freely in forms such as opera and Singspiel, serenade and divertimento.

"For Mozart En Route (or, A Little Traveling Music), I have borrowed four elements from Mozart’s Divertimento for String Trio (K. 563): a melody from movement IV; a rhythm from movement VI; a long curlicue from movement III; and a turn of phrase from movement V. I have freely combined, varied and thrown them into many stylistic guises, making what could be called a set of ‘micro-mini’ variations. The locales and scenery change often, and it may be a bit bumpy, but at about three minutes duration the ride is quick and won’t strain the behind."

Beyond Words, Ricercar for Violin, Viola, Cello and Piano
Prelude to a Shadow Play for Violin, Viola, Cello and Piano

Stephen Hartke (born in 1952)

Stephen Hartke, born on July 6, 1952 in Orange, New Jersey, grew up in New York City, where he was a professional choirboy, performing with the New York Philharmonic, Metropolitan Opera and other musical organizations. Hartke did his undergraduate study in composition at Yale, where he studied with James Drew and Alejandro Planchart. He subsequently earned a master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, studying primarily with George Rochberg and George Crumb, and a doctorate from the University of California at Santa Barbara as a student of Edward Applebaum and Peter Racine Fricker. As the recipient of a Fulbright fellowship, he taught at the University of São Paulo, Brazil in 1984-1985. He has also served on the faculty of the College of Creative Studies at UC-Santa Barbara, and is currently Professor of Composition at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. From 1988 to 1992, he held the post of Composer-in-Residence with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. Hartke’s most recent work, The Greater Good, or the Passion of Boule de Suif, an evening-length opera based on Guy de Maupassant’s short story, was commissioned by Glimmerglass Opera for premiere in July 2006.

Hartke has received awards, grants and commissions from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, New York Philharmonic, National Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Masterprize International Composing Competition, American Academy of Arts and Letters, American Academy in Rome, ASCAP Foundation, BMI, Chamber Music America, Fromm Foundation, Fulbright Senior Scholars Program, Guggenheim Foundation, Institute for American Music, Kennedy Center Friedheim Awards, Koussevitzky Music Foundation, Meet the Composer and National Endowment for the Arts. In 2004, he was awarded the Charles Ives Living from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, which allows him to devote himself to creative work. In announcing the three-year award, the distinguished American composer Ezra Laderman, chair of the selection committee, said, "Stephen Hartke’s magnificent musicality has brought forth a series of exquisitely crafted compositions. He is recognized as a composer of unusual gifts that exemplify what is wonderfully exciting about the music being created today."

Hartke wrote that Beyond Words, a modern "ricercar" (an early type of fugue, derived from the imitative Renaissance motet), "was composed between October 22 and December 4, 2001, in the immediate aftermath of the unspeakable events of September 11th. Rarely have I found it so difficult to work on a piece, but rarely has it seemed so absolutely imperative that I do so. As the opening material began to take shape, I found that certain turns of phrase echoed the beginning of [16th-century English composer] Thomas Tallis’ setting of the first verses of the Lamentations of Jeremiah, which are concerned with a catastrophe befalling a great city. Therefore, I decided to go a step further and to pattern the entire single-movement piece on the Tallis. Each of its six sections corresponds in general texture and affect to a section of the model, and certain of Tallis’ motives have been absorbed into my melodic lines. One important aspect of the piece does not stem from the Tallis, however, and that is the role of the piano, which appears at first as high, crystalline chords interrupting the flow of the strings’ polyphony, as if it were in shock and unable to participate with the others. Gradually, however, it is drawn into the discourse and becomes a full partner in the concluding pages of the work.

A "shadow play" is a type of theatrical entertainment, probably developed in China but most closely associated with the Indonesian islands of Java and Bali, in which flat, cut-out figures are manipulated in front of a focused light source to cast shadows on a translucent screen; the audience observes from the other side. In 2003, Hartke wrote a brief Prelude to a Shadow Play as one movement of a still-gestating piece titled Meanwhile (Incidental Music to Imaginary Plays). He described the Prelude as "rather quiet, stately, distant and, well, shadowy."

Quartet No. 3 for Violin, Viola, Cello and Piano

George Tsontakis (born in 1951)

Among this country’s most prestigious distinctions for a composer is the Kennedy Center Friedheim Award -- George Tsontakis has won it twice, in 1989 for his String Quartet No. 4 and three years later for Perpetual Angelus from the Four Symphonic Quartets. Tsontakis’ numerous other honors include a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1995, the 2002 Berlin Prize (Alberto Vilar Fellowship) for a residency at the American Academy in Berlin, the 2005 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for his Violin Concerto No. 2, and a Grammy nomination for Best Contemporary Classical Composition for pianist Stephen Hough’s recording of Ghost Variations, which was the only classical recording cited in Time magazine’s "Top Ten Recordings of 1998."

George Tsontakis, born in New York City on October 24, 1951, studied at Queens College, CUNY (composition with Hugo Weisgall) and at Juilliard (composition with Roger Sessions and conducting with Jorge Mester), and also attended Karlheinz Stockhausen’s seminar at the St. Cecilia Academy in Rome in 1981. Tsontakis has taught at Juilliard (1978) and the Brooklyn College Conservatory of Music (1986-1987), and since 1993, has been on the faculty of Sarah Lawrence College. He has been a member of the Artist Faculty of the Aspen Music Festival since 1976, and was the founding director of the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble from 1991 to 1998. Tsontakis is also known as a conductor: he has directed the Riverside Orchestra and the Metropolitan Greek Chorale of New York, and led the premieres of over fifty works.

Tsontakis’ compositions, many written on noteworthy commissions (the Fanfare for Six Horns and Tuba was composed in 1996 in celebration of the 25th anniversary of Kennedy Center), include: two oratorios (Erotokritos and Scenes from the Apocalypse), a cantata, a Stabat Mater and choral pieces on Greek texts; the Four Symphonic Quartets, two violin concertos and other works for orchestra; four string quartets and a growing repertory of chamber music for varied ensembles; and the Ghost Variations for piano. The English pianist Stephen Hough, who premiered and recorded the Ghost Variations, wrote of Tsontakis’ creative personality, "He rediscovered tonality in the mid-1980s, like many other composers, but managed to trace a uniquely personal harmonic path. Where many merely took out old suits that had been hanging in the closet for a season or two, dusted them off, and began wearing them again, Tsontakis seemed rather to weave his own cloth from familiar melodic and harmonic strands of the past. The result was a bespoke brilliance -- one of a kind -- in which the music is new, yet feels if it is already classic."

Tsontakis has provided the following information about his Piano Quartet No. 3, composed for the Opus One Piano Quartet in 2005 during his residency at the Music from Angel Fire Festival in New Mexico: "The Piano Quartet No. 3 is in three contrasting movements, though some of the thematic material returns in different sections. The first movement offers moments of subtle charm and lyricism, perhaps influenced by the music of Debussy. The movement opens (Barren) with repeated chords in the piano atop sustained harmonies in the strings. The middle section (Dolce, Cantabile) employs a two-note, step-wise motive that is worked into a climax before the movement closes with a haunting section marked ‘Desolate.’ The second movement begins (Legato) with single, bell-like notes (often in harmonics in the strings) that are passed among the instruments and lead directly into a livelier section marked ‘Liquid.’ This episode contains two moments of unmeasured, chromatic-scale ‘improvisations’ by the piano; after a brief reminder of the opening material, the movement seems to vaporize. The third movement, titled Breezy, has a decidedly folksy character, which is interrupted by dramatic rhythmic sections (Vigorous) that give the movement an intense, driving, powerful quality before it comes to a quiet close with the introspective chords from the first movement."

Quartet in G Minor for Piano, Violin, Viola and Cello, Op. 25

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)

The high-minded direction of Johannes Brahms’ musical career was evident from his teenage years -- as a lad, he studied the masterpieces of the Austro-German tradition with Eduard Marxsen, the most illustrious piano teacher in his native Hamburg, and played Bach and Beethoven on his earliest recitals; his first published compositions were not showy virtuoso trifles but three ambitious piano sonatas inspired by Classical models; he was irresistibly drawn to Joseph Joachim and the Schumanns and other of the most exalted musicians of his day. When Schumann hailed him as the savior of German music, the rightful heir to the mantle of Beethoven, in his famous article in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik in 1853, Brahms was only too eager to accept both the renown and the responsibility inherent in such a lofty appraisal. He tried sketching a symphony as early as 1855 (not completing it, however, until two decades later), but his principal means of fulfilling Schumann’s prophecy during the early phase of his creative life were focused first on the genres of piano works and songs, and then on chamber music.

Finished compositions did not come easily for Brahms, however, and he made numerous attempts to satisfy himself with a chamber piece before he allowed the publication of his Piano Trio, Op. 8 in 1854. (He destroyed at least three earlier efforts in that form.) The following year, he turned to writing quartets for piano, violin, viola and cello, a genre whose only precedents were the two by Mozart and a single specimen by Schumann. Work on the quartets did not go smoothly, however, and he laid one aside (in C Minor, eventually Op. 60) for almost two decades, and tinkered with the other two for the next half-dozen years in Hamburg and at his part-time post as music director for the court Lippe-Detmold, midway between Frankfurt and Hamburg.

Brahms was principally based in Hamburg during those years, usually staying with his parents, but in 1860, when he was 27 years old and eager to find the quiet and privacy to work on his compositions, he rented spacious rooms ("a quite charming flat with a garden," he said) in the suburb of Hamm from one Frau Dr. Elisabeth Rössing, a neighbor of two members of the local women’s choir he was then directing. Hamm was to be his home for the next two years, and there he worked on the Variations on a Theme of Schumann for Piano Duet (Op. 23), the Handel Variations (Op. 24) and the Piano Quartets in G Minor (Op. 25) and A Major (Op. 26). Brahms dedicated the A Major Quartet to his hospitable landlady. The two Piano Quartets were finally finished by early autumn 1861, and given a private reading by some unknown local musicians and Clara Schumann during her visit to Hamm shortly thereafter.

In September 1862, Brahms succumbed to a long-held desire and visited Vienna. He had already made several professional contacts in the city, perhaps most notably with Joseph Hellmesberger, Director of the Vienna Conservatory and leader of a highly regarded string quartet. Hellmesberger introduced his German visitor to Julius Epstein, professor of piano at the school, and an evening of Brahms’ music was planned for Epstein’s apartment, located, fortuitously, at Schulerstrasse 8, the very building in which Mozart had composed The Marriage of Figaro. Hellmesberger and his colleagues eagerly joined Brahms in reading the two new Piano Quartets, and the violinist echoed Schumann’s pronouncement when it was over: "This is indeed Beethoven’s heir." Hellmesberger insisted that they mark Brahms’ arrival in Vienna by presenting the G Minor Quartet at his recital on November 16th in the hall of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde; the program garnered sufficient success to warrant scheduling another concert two weeks later to introduce the A Major Quartet. Those events solidified Brahms’ reputation in Vienna, and were instrumental in helping him decide to settle in the city for good in August 1863.

The first movement of the G Minor Piano Quartet contains an abundance of thematic material woven into a seamless continuum through Brahms’ consummate contrapuntal skill. Balanced within its closely reasoned sonata form are pathos and vigor, introspection and jubilance, storm and tranquillity. The second movement (Intermezzo), cast in the traditional form of scherzo and trio, is formed from long-spun melodies in gentle, rocking rhythms. The Andante is in a broad three-part structure, with the middle section taking on a snappy martial air. The Gypsy Rondo finale is a spirited essay much in the style of Brahms’ Hungarian Dances.

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