Luminous Beauty The Piano Quartets at Jamesport Meeting House 1590 Main Rd, Jamesport, NY 11947 Sunday, May 14th, 2023, 5:00pm-7:00pm SOLD OUT! Music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven Musicians: Yezu Elizabeth Woo, violin; Michael Davis, viola, Yi Qun Xu, cello; Paolo Bartolani, piano Despription
" Between 1785 and 1786 , Mozart wrote his two piano quartets for an ensemble essentially as new as the piano. But for a few random and now obscure composers before him, Mozart became the first to claim a genre that would captivate composers from Mendelssohn and Schumann onwards. Yet when they were first published, Mozart's quartets still bore the conservative and market-wise indication for either harpsichord or "fortepiano", the compound word highlighting its novel feature (e.g. "loud" and "soft") in a mysterious reversal of its two words from the original name. Mozart's "piano" quartets are considered the first in the genre not because they are historically the first, but because they are the historically the first great ones. When he wrote them, Mozart was at the zenith of his fame as a performing concert pianist as well as a confirmed master of chamber music. The quartets are superbly balanced chamber works with all the craft and intimacy that implies, but they are also magnificent showcases for piano, in essence, chamber concertos, a kinship emphasized by their three-movement designs." written by Kai Christiansen The E flat major work is the most adventurous, and the one to which Beethoven biographer Jan Swafford wrote these words “In the massive Adagio assai that begins the Piano Quartet in E flat major, listeners then and later could only be stunned at the subtlety and depth of feeling, call it a certain wistful pathos, coming from a composer of age fourteen”. Music Program Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Piano Quartet K. 493 in E flat (violin, viola, cello, piano) written between 1785 and 1786 Allegro Larghetto Allegretto Ludwig van Beethoven Eyeglasses Duo WoO 32 for Viola and Cello written in 1796 Ludwig van Beethoven Piano Quartet WoO 36, #1 in E Flat (violin, viola, cello, piano) written in 1785 Adagio assai Allegro con Spirito Thema. Cantabile – Variations I – VI Public Funds come from the Statewide Community Regrant program of the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature and administered by Huntington Arts Council. Public Funds come from the Suffolk County Omnibus Grant, sponsored by Legislator Al Krupski and with the support of the Suffolk County Legislature. The Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation has provided additional dedicated support for music events in historical buildings. This concert is presented by Rites of Spring Music Festival in collaboration with Jamesport Meeting House Yezu Elizabeth Woo, violin Praised for “her technical quality, beauty of sound, and above all, the projection of an uncommon musical sensibility" (El Norte, Monterrey), Violinist Yezu Elizabeth Woo made her debut at Carnegie Hall at age 16, where she became the youngest performer to play all 24 of Niccolo Paganini’s Caprices for solo violin. Yezu has been invited to perform at the Lincoln Center, United Nations (NY), the Smetana Hall (Prague), Musikverein (Vienna), Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, and the Berlin Philharmonie, and has recorded for EMI Classics, ECM Records, and MOOK Sound. She was the Artistic Director and co-founder of Shattered Glass, a NYC string ensemble, which debuted to great acclaim in 2012. Winner of the Korean national award, "Outstanding International Musician of the Year" by the Arts Critics Association, as well as "Artist of the Year'' by the Gangwon Foundation, Yezu was appointed as Honorary Ambassador of the City of Chuncheon, where she is currently serving as the Artistic Director of New York in Chuncheon Music Festival. Her commitment to Korean traditional and new music has led her to performances at the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) ‘ART FESTA’ as part of the ongoing peace process between the two Koreas, as well as seeing collaborations with the KBS Korean Traditional Orchestra. Born in Freiburg, Germany, Yezu moved to the U.S. from South Korea at age ten to study with Albert Markov. She received her B.M. Degree from the Manhattan School of Music, M.M. Degree at The Juilliard School, Performance Certificate from Bard Conservatory, and her Doctorate Degree at Stony Brook University. Her principal teachers include Albert Markov, Catherine Cho, Laurie Smukler, Arnaud Sussmann and the members of the Emerson Quartet. Yezu is a recipient of Fulbright Scholarship (‘19-20) in Germany, where she was a member of the Ensemble Modern Academy, Frankfurt, and a researcher at the Isang-Yun-Haus in Berlin. She currently splits her time between New York and Berlin. Michael Davis, viola Violist MICHAEL DAVIS enjoys a varied career as a chamber musician and orchestral player. A founding member of Shattered Glass, a conductor-less string ensemble based in New York City, Michael has performed at prestigious institutions including Schneider Concerts at The New School for Music, Carnegie Hall, Princeton University, SphinxConnect Artist Showcase, and as a guest artist at Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival. Michael has performed chamber music throughout South Korea with the New York in Chuncheon Festival, and appears frequently with the Grammy Award-winning Pedro Giraudo Tango Ensemble. He also performs regularly with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and the New York City Ballet Orchestra. Michael completed his undergraduate degree as a full scholarship student of Michael Klotz at the Florida International University Wertheim School of Music (Miami, FL), and his graduate degrees as a student of Karen Dreyfus and Irene Breslaw at the Manhattan School of Music Orchestral Performance Program where he was a recipient of the Charles Grossman Memorial Endowment Scholarship. He is also a former Tanglewood Music Center Fellow and an alumnus of the Pacific Music Festival. Yi Qun Xu, cellist Praised for displaying “great poise and masterful technique” and possessing “an amazing rich tone” by The Day, cellist Yi Qun Xu has performed extensively as a soloist and chamber musician across the United States. A native of China, she came to the U.S. after winning multiple top prizes in Chinese national cello competitions. Yi Qun is the recipient of the 2022 Presser Music Award and the first-prize winner of the 2021 New York International Artists Cello Competition. As the winner of the 2018 Sanders-Juilliard-Tel Aviv Museum prize, she was presented in recital at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. She is also the first prize winner at the International Antonio Janigro Competition. As a passionate chamber musician, she has been heard at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Cellists of Lincoln Center Concert and the prestigious Marlboro Music Festival. She has collaborated with artists including Itzhak Perlman and members of the Cleveland, Juilliard, Tokyo, Ébène Quartets. Yi Qun is a member of The Juilliard School Pre-College and Music Advancement Program faculty. She also serves as Joel Krosnick’s teaching assistant at The Juilliard School. Yi Qun has taught at Heifetz International Music Institute’s Junior Program. She is very excited to join The Perlman Music Program’s Winter Residency to teach chamber music in December, 2022. She has performed for community engagement events for communities throughout the United States and China. Her performances are featured on Alec Baldwin’s podcast “Here is the Thing” and WQXR’s “Midday Masterpieces.” She can be heard on tours with Musicians from Marlboro during both 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 seasons. Yi Qun is the founding Artistic Director of Noree Chamber Soloists. Paolo Bartolani, pianist, Founder and Artistic Director of Rites of Spring Music Festival Paolo Bartolani is a pianist, musicologist and music manager, working in both classical and contemporary music. He graduated in 1989 from the Santa Cecilia Music Conservatory in Rome (Italy). He studied with Eduardo Hubert, and after graduation, with Charles Rosen, György Sándor and Andor Foldes. He also studied French piano repertoire with Germaine Mounier at the Ecole Normale de Musique in Paris. In 1994, he received his Master in Musicology of the 20th century degree under the direction of Hugues Dufourt at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in collaboration with IRCAM / Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. Paolo performs as a soloist and also as a member of chamber ensembles in Europe and United States. He writes articles for the musicology journals Sonus-Materials for Contemporary Music and Music/Reality. In 2006, he created a Master Degree Program in Cultural Enterprise Administration at the University of Perugia, where he also teaches. At the Venice Biennale, from 2008 to 2012, Paolo was the General Coordinator of ENPARTS - European Network of Performing Arts, which promotes the creation of new works in dance, music and theater by young artists. From 2009 to 2014 he was the Director of the Résonnance Italy, a nonprofit organization based in Switzerland, where he was responsible for its artistic and humanitarian program, "bringing music to places where it is not heard." The members of the organization – singers, instrumentalists, conductors – have performed more than two hundred concerts in hospitals, nursing homes and prisons in order to promote musical sensibilities and share the joy of music. He has been the General Coordinator of Music Up Close Network at Santa Cecilia National Academy in Rome. The Network includes seven European orchestras who promote new orchestral works and support a new generation of musicians to connect with young audiences. He founded the Rites of Spring Music Fest in 2016 to promote classical and contemporary music on the North Fork of Long Island, and to combine music, history and the natural environment. The Festival currently is a non-profit organization 501c3 and he is the Artistic Director and Responsible for developing the Festival’s program. |