Cellist David Finckel and pianist Wu Han rank among the most esteemed and
influential classical musicians in the world today. The duo is regularly
featured in the country’s leading music festivals, including recent
performances at the Aspen Music Festival, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival,
Music@Menlo, and Chamber Music Northwest. David Finckel and Wu Han’s
wide-ranging musical activities also include the launch of ArtistLed, the
first musician-directed and Internet-based recording company, which, in
2007, celebrated its tenth year. All ArtistLed recordings have received
critical acclaim and are available via the company’s website at
www.artistled.com. The duo’s “Russian Classics” recording, featuring works
by Rachmaninov, Prokofiev, and Shostakovich, received BBC Music Magazine’s
coveted “Editor's Choice” award. David Finckel and Wu Han have served as
Artistic Directors of The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center since
2004. They are also the founders and Artistic Directors of Music@Menlo, a
chamber music festival in Silicon Valley that has garnered international
acclaim since its inception in 2003. Prior to launching Music@Menlo, Wu Han
and David Finckel served for three seasons as Artistic Directors of
SummerFest La Jolla. For many years, David Finckel and Wu Han taught
alongside the late Isaac Stern at Carnegie Hall and the Jerusalem Music
Center. They appeared annually on the Aspen Music Festival’s Distinguished
Artist Master Class series and in various educational outreach programs
across the country.
One of only two wind players to have been awarded the Avery Fisher Prize
since the award's inception in 1974, David Shifrin is in constant demand as
an orchestral soloist, recitalist, and chamber music collaborator. An artist
member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center since 1989, David
Shifrin served as its artistic director from 1992 to 2004. He has toured
extensively throughout the US with CMSLC and appeared in several national
television broadcasts on Live From Lincoln Center. He has also been the
artistic director of Chamber Music Northwest in Portland, Oregon since 1981.
David Shifrin joined the faculty at the Yale School of Music in 1987 and was
appointed Artistic Director of the Chamber Music Society of Yale and Yale's
annual concert series at Carnegie Hall in September 2008. He has also served
on the faculties of The Juilliard School, University of Southern California,
University of Michigan, Cleveland Institute of Music, and the University of
Hawaii. In 2007 he was awarded an honorary professorship at China's Central
Conservatory in Beijing. Mr. Shifrin's recordings on Delos, DGG, Angel/EMI,
Arabesque, BMG, SONY, and CRI have consistently garnered praise and awards,
including three Grammy nominations. His recording of the Mozart Clarinet
Concerto with the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, performed in its
original version on a specially built basset clarinet, was named Record of
the Year by Stereo Review. In addition to the Avery Fisher Prize, David
Shifrin is the recipient of a Solo Recitalists' Fellowship from the National
Endowment for the Arts and the 1998 Distinguished Alumnus Award from the
Music Academy of the West. At the outset of his career, he won the top prize
at both the Munich and the Geneva International Competitions.
David Finckel and Wu Han have previously appeared under the auspices of
Chamber Music Columbus on March 18, 2006, and February 13, 2010. David
Finckel has appeared as a member of the Emerson String Quartet in 1980,
March 1982, December 1984, and October 1989. David Shifrin has appeared with
pianist Jeffrey Kahane and violinist Joseph Swensen on November 21, 1987.
Wu Han, David Finckel, and David Shifrin appear through special arrangement
with David Rowe Artists, 24 Bessom Street, #4, Marblehead, Massachusetts
01945.
Public Relations and Press Representative: Milina Barry PR.
David Finckel and Wu Han recordings are available exclusively on ArtistLed –
http://www.ArtistLed.com or
1-888-ArtLedCD.
Wu Han performs on the Steinway Piano.
Ludwig van Beethoven (born Bonn, December 16, 1770; died Vienna, March 26, 1827)
Trio in B-flat major, for piano, clarinet, and cello, op. 11 (composed 1797)
By the time Beethoven wrote his Trio, op. 11, Vienna knew him as both an
ambitious, rising composer and a piano virtuoso celebrated for his
improvisational abilities. It was at the first performance of the trio, in
the home of his friend and disciple Count Ferdinand Ries, that Beethoven was
challenged by a rival pianist and composer of the day, Daniel Steibelt
(1765-1823). Steibelt had listened disdainfully to the trio, in which the
piano looms prominently but not overwhelmingly, and figured that Beethoven
was no threat.
Eight days later, the two met at the Count’s home. Following a performance
of a quintet of his, Steibelt began to improvise on the same theme that
forms the basis of the finale of Beethoven’s trio. Pria ch’io l’impegno was
a currently popular tune from the opera L’Amor Marinaro (The Corsair) by
Joseph Weigl (1777-1846). Outraged, Beethoven grabbed the cello part to
Steibelt’s quintet, set it upside-down on the piano’s music stand, and began
to pound out one of its themes with a single finger. His furious
improvisations drove Steibelt from the room and the two remained bitter
adversaries until their deaths.
That same Weigl tune gave rise to the trio’s occasional nickname, the
Gassenhauer or Street Song trio. It was variations on that tune that
clarinetist Josef Beer (1744-1811) had requested from Beethoven in the first
place. Having succumbed to popular opinion by appropriating this hit to
further his career, Beethoven always remained unsatisfied with that
movement, though he never penned a substitute. Another sign of his ambition
was the work’s dedication to Mozart’s former patron, Countess Maria
Wilhelmine von Thun, mother of his own friend and patron, Prince Lichnowsky.
A striking unison statement of the first theme opens the Allegro con brio
(4/4); the second theme is introduced by a startling key change. Continuing
the tonal adventure, the development begins with the second rather than the
first theme. Con espressione is the marking of the Adagio (3/4), headed by
the singing cello, then the clarinet. The minor-mode midsection, dominated
by the piano, is followed by a varied repeat of the first part.
In the finale, Beethoven dismembers Weigl’s ditty and reconstructs it nine
different ways. First is a piano solo; second an unaccompanied clarinet and
cello duet; third, a simple con fuoco trio. Variations four and five are
minor and major renditions, respectively, of the theme. Six finds Beethoven
playing with the imitation between the piano on one hand and the cello and
clarinet on the other. Minor returns in the march-like seventh variation but
retreats in the eighth, where jittery piano triplets sound under the melodic
clarinet and cello. In the final variation, the trilling piano takes charge
of a small development. A dancing 6/8 Allegretto coda concludes the journey.
Max Bruch (born Cologne, January 6, 1838; died Berlin, October 2, 1920)
Four pieces for piano, clarinet, and cello, from op. 83 (composed 1908-1910)
Born in Cologne in 1838 and a composer before turning eleven, Max Bruch
won the Frankfurt Mozart Foundation Prize with a string quartet by the time
he was fourteen. Throughout his life, Bruch wrote music that stood
against most of the progressive forces of European composition, from Wagner
and Liszt all the way through Debussy. He always took pride in the
fact that his lyricism was rooted in folk music; more to the point, his love
and respect for the folk song derived not from book learning but from actual
travel and research.
Only one of the Eight Pieces, op. 83, has folk origins, but that
one was suggested by the dedicatee of the whole collection, a young friend
identified as Princess Zu Wied. Originally for piano, clarinet, and
viola, the Eight Pieces were written for performance by Bruch's
clarinetist son, Max Felix Bruch (1884-1943). The composer considered
each of the pieces to be an independent entity. He neither intended
the set to be played together nor dictated the order of any movements
played. To increase the works' appeal, the publisher Simrock released
a number of alternate versions including one for piano trio and the present
arrangement for piano, clarinet, and cello. In general, the clarinet and
cello provide most of the thematic material while the piano usually acts as
harmonic accompaniment.
Wu Han, David Finckel, and David Shifrin have chosen to perform four of the
eight pieces in Bruch’s Opus 83 set. They open with Movement VI
in G minor, one of only two with a distinctive title, Nachtgesang
(Nocturne), marked Andante con moto. Although the
clarinet sounds the theme and is featured in a cadenza in the mid-section,
the three instruments are treated more nearly equal in this movement than in
any of the others.
Second is Movement II in B minor, marked Allegro con moto, in which the
agitated piano serves as accompaniment to the broad statements of the cello
and clarinet. Third is Movement III in C sharp minor, marked
Andante con moto, longest of the eight. In a 1908 letter, Bruch
suggested that he first conceived the set as including a harp and it’s easy
to hear vestiges of that in the movement’s arpeggiated piano. A
restless cello is highlighted in two extended passages, a much calmer
clarinet in one. Finally is Movement VII in B major, marked
Allegro vivace, ma non troppo. The only movement of the eight in the
major mode, this sonata-rondo finds the clarinet playing brightly in its
upper register.
Johannes Brahms (born Hamburg, May 7, 1833; died Vienna, April 3, 1897)
Trio in A minor for piano, clarinet, and cello, op. 114 (composed 1891)
On December 11, 1890, Johannes Brahms sent to his publisher Fritz Simrock
some last minute changes to the finale of his Quintet in G major, op.
111, which had received its premiere performance exactly a month
earlier in Vienna. “With this note,” he wrote, “you can take leave of my
music because it is high time to stop.” Brahms fully expected this to be his
final opus, abandoned plans for a fifth symphony, and destroyed several
incomplete manuscripts. A few months later, he drew up his will and began to
review his life’s work with an eye toward revising what he wanted to publish
in definitive editions and discarding pieces he now considered inferior.
In the process of looking back, however, Brahms began to re-inspire himself.
Then in March 1891, he first heard the virtuoso clarinetist Richard Mühlfeld
(1856-1907), who spurred Brahms to write the four clarinet-centered chamber
works of the next few years: the Trio, op. 114; the Quintet,
op. 115; and the two Sonatas, op. 120. All told, Brahms would
end up composing roughly a dozen additional pieces following Opus 111,
his intended swan song.
Brahms had spent the summer of 1891 in the resort of Bad Ischl near
Salzburg, as was his habit, and completed both the Trio and the
Quintet by July. Throughout his career, Brahms had found himself
writing pieces in pairs just like this, simultaneously or one right after
the other. The coupled works often approached similar problems from
differing perspectives: the Serenades, opp. 11 and 16; the first
two symphonies (opp. 68 and 73) and the last two symphonies (opp. 90 and
98); the Piano Quartets, opp. 25 and 26. The 1891 Trio and
Quintet were such a pair, though the latter has historically tended
to overshadow the more somber former.
In the Trio, op. 114, the opening theme’s rising and falling cello
motif is said to have been sketched originally for a projected but unwritten
fifth symphony. The more lyrical second theme employs an old Viennese
technique, being introduced as a canonic inversion. From this theme is
derived the Adagio’s first subject, initially in the clarinet,
repeated in the cello. Not a typically boisterous scherzo, the Andantino
grazioso is a simple minuet with two trios, the first in F-sharp minor,
the second in D major. Fluid shifts of rhythm between 2/4 and 6/8 mark the
Allegro finale. As in the first movement, the second theme appears as an
inverted canon. Throughout the work, the cello tends toward its upper range,
carrying on a dialogue with the clarinet.
--
Program notes by Jay Weitz, Senior Consulting Database Specialist for music,
OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Dublin, Ohio.
He is a contributing performing arts critic for the weekly
alternative newspaper Columbus Alive
(http://www.columbusalive.com).
