Major Leaguers on 5th
Monday, December 7, 2009 – 8pm
Jasper String Quartet
Ilya Itin, piano
of Southwest Florida
Jasper String Quartet
With concerts described as “sonically delightful and expressively compelling”, the Jasper String Quartet bring their exuberant musical gifts to Naples as CCC's resident ensemble for the 2009-2010 season. Named after the beautiful Jasper National Park in Alberta, Canada, The Jaspers are currently the graduate quartet-in-residence at the Yale School of Music, where they coach undergraduate ensembles and study with the Tokyo String Quartet. Founded in 2003 during their undergraduate years at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, they furthered their professional training at Rice University's unique string quartet studies program as well as at the Aspen Music Festival's Center for Advanced Quartet Studies, the Emerson Quartet International Chamber Music Workshop, the Juilliard String Quartet Seminar, the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival and the Banff Centre in Alberta, Canada. Winners of the Plowman, Coleman and Fischoff chamber music competitions, The Jaspers have performed across the United States as well as in Canada, Norway and Italy. With their dedication to both traditional and contemporary repertoire, Classic Chamber Concerts is proud to have The Jasper String Quartet as its 2009-2010 resident ensemble.
Ilya Itin, piano
"A rare and exciting artistry...", "Borderline unbelieveable in combined power and accuracy...", "A prime example of a superb technique put at the service of an inquiring and imaginative mind." Such are the superlatives used to describe the artistry of pianist Ilya Itin. A graduate of the famed Moscow Conservatory, he won the William Kapell Competition in the USA at age 23 , followed by victories in both the Casadesus and Leeds international piano competitions. Soloist with orchestras such as the Cleveland Orchestra, St. Petersburg Philharmonic, the Tokyo Symphony, the National Symphony and the London Philharmonic, Itin has also played sold-out recitals throughout North America including at the Miami International Piano Festival. His recent touring schedule included debuts with the China National Symphony playing Rachmaninoff's 3rd Piano Concerto, and Prokofiev's 2nd Piano Concerto with the Bilkent Symphony in Ankarra, Turkey. Equally prized as a coach, Itin was a featured artist at the Golandsky Institute of Princeton University, where he gave master-classes, taught, and performed.
Franz Joseph Haydn
(1732-1809; Austria)
String Quartet, op. 76 n.1 (1796-97)
Henri Dutilleux
(b. 1916; Angers, France)
Ainsi la Nuit (1976)
César Franck
(1822-1890; Belgium)
Piano Quintet in F minor (1880)
About The Music:
Cesar Franck (1822-1890)
Piano Quintet in F minor
Cesar Franck achieved early fame as an organist. His most important and distinguished compositions date from the last two decades of his life. When Camille Saint-Saens formed the Societe National de Musique in 1871 to promote the work of French composers aspiring to the highest artistic standards, Franck was encouraged to write a major work for piano. He had not written for the instrument since his youthful Trio Concertantes in the early 1840's. The result was the ambitious Piano Quintet in F minor, premiered with great success on January 17, 1880 at the Societe National by the Marsick Quartet with Saint-Saens at the piano. Interestingly the latter did not like the work's high voltage emotional content and formal freedom. Saint-Saens left the hall immediately after the last notes sounded.
Franck's use of cyclic form, given expressive content in the Symphony in D minor and Symphonic Variations for piano and orchestra, takes flight in the Piano Quintet. After a brief introduction, the principle theme appears which Franck recycles throughout the score. The heart of the work is the Lento con molto sentimento (second movement) in which angelic serenity provides respite from the tempest tossed passions of the outer movements. Building on the legacy of Mozart and Beethoven, Franck achieved a decisive contribution to the piano quintet, writing a brilliant, moving score in his own expressive compositional voice.
(notes © Lawrence Budmen)
Henri Dutilleux
Ainsi la Nuit
Henri Dutilleux's work for string quartet, Ainsi la nuit (1976) was commissioned by the Koussevitzky Foundation and was intended for performance by the Juilliard Quartet. Before starting on the actual composition, Dutilleux spent some time studying the intricacies of string-playing techniques of the time. Dutilleux completed Ainsi la nuit in 1976 and the work was premiered on January 6, 1977, in Paris, but not by the Juilliard Quartet. Actually, the premiere was given by the Quatuor Parrenin. The Juilliard Quartet would first perform the composition in the Library of Congress at Washington, D.C., on April 13, 1978. The final version of the piece has seven movements with four "parentheses" lying in between the first five movements. Dutilleux did not like to leave the individual movements of his works untitled. The seven movements of Ainsi la nuit are "Nocturne I," "Miroir d'espace," "Litanies I," "Litanies II," "Constellations," "Nocturne II," and "Temps suspendu." The "parentheses" are mostly used to recall or foreshadow musical material in the rest of the work. For this reason, Ainsi la nuit is often associated with the idea of memory. Each of its movements highlights various special effects (pizzicato, glissandi, harmonics, extreme registers, contrasting dynamics) resulting in a difficult but fascinating work.
(notes @ All Music Guide)