Friday February 1, 2019 at 7:30 pm

Christ and St. Stephen's Church, 120 West 69th Street, NYC

Tickets are $30 (open seating). Students under 25 with ID: $15 at the door.

Jesse Mills (violin), Inessa Zaretsky (piano), Arthur Dibble (viola) and Robert La Rue (cello) perform a pair of mid-20th century duos -- the Shostakovich Cello Sonata (1934) and Luigi Dallapiccola’s Tartiniana seconda for violin and piano (1956) -- followed by Fauré’s great C minor Piano Quartet (1883).

Artists

Inessa Zaretsky (piano) is on the Piano faculty of Mannes College, The New School University. Director of the Swannanoa Chamber Music Festival in Asheville, North Carolina, Artistic co-director of the Phoenix Chamber Music Series in New York City. and resident pianist with Craftsbury Chamber Players in Vermont. An award winning pianist and composer, her music has been performed in England, Norway, Canada, Australia, Italy, Russia and throughout the United States.
Jesse Mills (violin) performs with the Horzsowki Trio and Duo Prism, and was also a member of the FLUX Quartet. He has been heard locally at Alice Tully and Carnegie Halls and the Metropilatan Museum, and has also appeared at the Marlboro Music Festival. Twice nominated for a Grammy Award,he has recorded for the Koch, Centaur, Tzadik, Max Jazz and Verve labels. He serves as artistic co-director of the Alpenglow Chamber Music Festival in Colorado.
Arthur Dibble (viola), is a former member of the St. Louis Symphony and has toured with Led Zeppelin and Barbra Streisand. He has taught for the Midori Foundation and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and is the Director of the Summertrios Chamber Music Festival.
Robert La Rue (cello) was First Prize Winner of the National Society of Arts and Letters Cello Competition, whose jury chairman was Mstislav Rostropovitch. Cellist of the Alcott Piano Trio and member of the cello trio, VC3, he also plays in the New York City Opera Orchestra. He is Music Director of Arion Chamber Music's concert series.

Notes on the Program

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975)

Sonata for Cello and Piano in D minor, Op. 40 (1934)

Dmitri Shostakovich's "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District" is one of the most famously censored works of art produced in the 20th century. Less well known is that it was well received after its first performance in 1934 and popular for about two and a half years before Shostakovich was censured for writing the "bourgeois and decadent" work in 1936. But his life was already turbulent before that censure in the wake of his two year old marriage and a 1934 affair which resulted in a separation and brief divorce.

It was in the midst of this emotional chaos that The "Sonata for Cello and Piano in D minor, Op. 40" was written in the late summer of 1934. The Cello Sonata is often described as an early work, but it is better viewed as a transition from his early work in which he seeks a new, simplified and expressive musical language that he could call his own. The work steadily gained a wider and more appreciative audience as Shostakovich's distinctive sound solidified in later works. That language would gain wide acclaim just three years later in Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony.

The first movement features unusual tonal shifts that move from the piano to the cello as the tension created in the opening resolves into a gentler second theme and, late in the movement, an unusual slow-motion and pianissimo recapitulation of the movements themes. The second movement opens with a driving ostinato and is then joined by a delicate theme presented in widely spaced octaves on the piano. The movement then turns witty as a light-hearted cello theme is pantomimed in the piano’s brittle high register and well established classical gestures are set askew with sudden lurches through unrelated keys. The movement ends suddenly soon after the driving ostinato of the opening returns.

The third movement, Largo, provides an early example of a mood Shostakovich would later use in his most powerful works, as icy dissonances evoke bleak landscapes that lead to reflective introspection. The dark background provided by the piano contrasts with rhapsodic, vocal foreground in the cello until the music fades. This sets up a very different set of contrasts in the brief and caustic, yet exuberant and colorful, finale, a variation of a rondo in which the main playful theme changes as it returns. In the second variation on the theme the piano lets loose in a helter-skelter cadenza that veers into unexpected tonal highways. When it appears a third time it brings the movement to a brilliant climax.

Luigi Dallapiccola (1904-1975)

Tartiniana seconda for violin and piano (1956)

Luigi Dallapiccola is generally credited as being the first Italian serial composer. He is also credited with developing techniques that allow lyrical serial compositions that retain tonal styles and preserve the melodic line in ways that serialism’s detractors claim is absent in such music. Dallapiccola stretches those techniques to the limit as he applies them to the work of Giuseppe Tartini in Tartiniana seconda.

Dallapiccola and Giuseppe Tartini were born, some 300 years apart, in nearby towns on peninsula of Istria, a region that takes great pride in its regional favorite sons, in part because it national identity has been more fluid. Istria was controlled by Venice in Tartini’s time, Austria-Hungary at the time of Dallapiccola’s birth, and has been divided between Croatia, Slovenia, and Italy since the breakup of Yugoslavia, Giuseppe Tartini’s memory and work endure in Istria to this day, and is not unlikely that Dallapiccola had childhood memories of Tartini's music.

It was, however, violinist Sandro Materassi who encouraged Dallapiccola to reimagine Tartini’s Baroque violin sonatas (he wrote over 100 of them) as modern serialist works. Materassi supploed Dallapiccola with copies of many of Tartini's compositions. Dallapiccola proceeded to manipulate Tartini's diatonic themes into tone rows while preserving the emotional character, style, and instrumental color of Tartini's original works.The success of an earlier Tartiniana (1951) that led, five years later, to Tartiniana Seconda. The result is an accomplished work that fuses the Baroque with modern contrapuntal sensibilities.

The first movement (Pastoral) opens with a sad and lyrical theme that intertwines with portions of itself. The second movement features virtuosic violin techniques that Tartini, an acclaimed violinist who sought to dazzle audiences with technically demanding ornamentation, including double stop trills that remain difficult even for modern violinists. The rhythmic second movement, Bourree, includes a full complement of Baroque ornamentation on the violin. Tone row-style manipulations of the theme grow ever more complicated in the third movement (Presto leggierissimo), but the movement still scampers and frolics. The final movement ("Variations") stretches the limits of serialist thematic manipulation by counterposing different variations from Tartini's Sonata in A minor against each other.

Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924)

Piano Quartet No. 1 in C minor, Op. 15 (1883)

Gabriel Fauré, considered by many to be the most influential French composer of the late 19th and early 20th century, is sometimes compared with his German contemporary, Johannes Brahms. The comparison is apt at several levels. Both wrote successfully in a wide range of musical genres. Both produced large numbers of popular songs. Both are particularly well known for choral works (especially their frequently performed Requiems). And the piano quartets each composed are cornerstones of the chamber music repertoire.

As was the case when Shostakovich wrote his cello sonata (described above), this quartet is written against the background of love’s turmoil. Fauré started work on the C minor Piano Quartet in 1876, in the midst of his five year quest to win the heart of Marianne Viardot. He didn’t finish the work until 1879. In 1877 they became engaged, but Marianne broke it off within four months. It is generally held that the distress of the broken engagement strongly informs the superb third movement, Adagio.

Fauré extensively revised this quartet, especially the 4th movement, four years after its completion in 1879 and initial performance on February 14, 1880. It is the 1883 version that will be performed today.

The first movement, Allegro molto moderato, contrasts a vigorous melody with a delicate theme in E♭ major (later C major) with lightly stressed off-beats. The movement is both lively and dignified, with florid piano writing. In the second movement, Scherzo, Allegro vivo, Fauré, who generally eschews brilliant instrumental display, delivers a rare virtuoso piece. At different points the strings play pizzicato and are muted, yet the whole movement sparkles. The scherzos contrast principal themes in E♭ major and G minor. The central trio is in B♭ major.

Fauré works through the grief of unrequited love In the superb Adagio third movement. It starts in C minor with a sad air of tragedy, but later warms to an A♭ major central theme before returning to C minor as it echos of the movements tragic opening. Optimism returns as the finale, Allegro molto, contrasts the driving rhythms in the piano with soaring melodies that leads to a joyous coda. An initial C minor theme that recalls themes in prior movements contracts against a tonally ambiguous theme primarily in E♭ major. The themes come together in C major to conclude the piece.