FESTIVAL FINALE: American Masterworks
Our festival finale is an exciting celebration of the vitality of American music from the turn of the 20th century until today: native and folk influences in Antonín Dvořák, New England church hymns and popular tunes in Charles Ives, traditional Romanticism in Amy Beach, and modern-day lyricism in Chris Rogerson. The sensational Fleur Barron, who opened the festival, returns to close the summer in a beautiful world premiere work by Rogerson, and the dynamic South African pianist Anton Nel makes his CMNW debut in Beach’s ravishing Piano Quintet.
OREGON POET PRELUDE:
Featuring Daniela Naomi Molnar
Thursday, 7/27
PRELUDE PERFORMANCES:
7pm | Union Bassoon Quartet, Natalie Alexander (solo bass clarinet) & Alexis Zou (piano) in The Reser lobby
7:30pm | Portland Saxophone Ensemble on The Reser plaza
Saturday, 7/29
PRELUDE PERFORMANCE:
7pm | with students of Hae-Jin Kim’s Violin Studio on the Kaul Auditorium stage
Fleur Barron appears by arrangement with IMG Artists, 7 West 54th Street, New York, NY 10019. (212) 994-3500 www.imgartists.com
Patricia Reser Center for the Arts
Thursday, 7/27 • 8:00 pm
Reed College, Kaul Auditorium
Saturday, 7/29 • 8:00 pm PT
Program
Click on any piece of music below to learn more about it.
- ANTONIN DVOŘÁK String Quartet No. 12 in F Major, Op. 96 (“American”)
ANTONIN DVOŘÁK (1841-1904) String Quartet No. 12 in F Major, Op. 96 (“American”) (26’)
I. Allegro ma non troppo
II. Lento
III. Molto Vivace
IV. Finale: vivace ma non troppoAll fans of Dvořák’s “American” music owe a debt of gratitude to Josef Kovařík. If Dvořák had not met and befriended the young Czech-American violinist, he would not have written the String Quartet in F Major, Op. 96, or the String Quintet, Op. 97 (both nicknamed “American”), nor would the summer of 1893, when Dvořák and his family spent the summer in a small town in northeastern Iowa, prove to be one of the most significant periods in the composer’s life.
Kovařík grew up in Spillville, Iowa, a small farming community settled by Czech and German immigrants, and he served as Dvořák’s personal assistant from 1892–95, while Dvořák headed the National Conservatory in New York City. Understanding Dvořák’s dislike of city life and his need for the slower pace and quiet of the countryside, Kovařík invited the composer and his family to leave behind the hustle and bustle of New York City and live in Spillville during the summer of 1893.
Spillville clearly agreed with Dvořák; within three days of his arrival, he began work on Op. 96. Dvořák wrote quickly, as was his wont, and finished the quartet two weeks later. Eager to hear his new work, Dvořák performed the first violin part, with members of the Kovařík family playing the other instruments, in the first performance in the music room of the Spillville school.
“When I wrote this quartet in the Czech community of Spillville in 1893, I wanted to write something for once that was very
melodious and straightforward,” Dvořák later wrote. “Dear Papa Haydn kept appearing before my eyes, and that is why it all turned out so simply. And it’s good that it did.” In keeping with his focus on clear themes and ideas, Dvořák crafted many of the melodies from pentatonic scales, with basic, understated harmonic accompaniments.Violists feel a particular kinship with Dvořák, himself an accomplished player. In Dvořák’s music, particularly his chamber works, the viola often takes center stage. Many of the “American” Quartet’s themes are first played by the viola, like the opening melody of the Allegro non troppo.
The unadorned melodies and ready accessibility of Op. 96 appealed to audiences from its first public performance by the Kneisel Quartet in Boston on New Year’s Day, 1894, and are part of the reason Op. 96 remains one of Dvořák’s most popular chamber works.
—© Elizabeth Schwartz
- CHRIS ROGERSON “Sign for My Father, Who Stressed the Bunt” (2023)
CHRIS ROGERSON Sign for My Father, Who Stressed the Bunt (2023)
I am right-handed in nearly everything I do—except for baseball, a sport my father taught me as a left-hander himself. I grew up playing wiffle ball in my backyard, my own “rough diamond,” begging my dad to play game after game. Of course I wanted to crush the ball out of the park, but my father taught me to focus on the little things, like how to track down a fly ball in center field. I idolized ruthless competitors like Barry Bonds; my father taught me a game of quietude.
So when my former teacher Martin Bresnick introduced me to the poem “Sign for My Father, Who Stressed the Bunt” by David Bottoms, I was drawn to it and hoped to set it one day. I rediscovered it recently when Bottoms passed away. To me, this beautiful poem embodies the unique relationship between many fathers and their children. Have I ever learned “what you were laying down” (a clever reference to the bunt itself)? In particular, I find it moving that the poem itself is a personal sign to the poet’s father: “Like a hand brushed across the bill of a cap / Let this be the sign / I’m getting a grip on the sacrifice.”
In Sign for My Father, I try to capture an elegiac feeling of childhood, as well as the uniquely American nostalgia for the pastime of baseball. This work is dedicated to my father.
—© Chris Rogerson
Chris Rogerson’s Sign for My Father, Who Stressed the Bunt, was commissioned by CMNW’s Commissioning Fund. Since 1971, CMNW has commissioned and premiered more than 120 new works by some of America’s leading composers.
It is Chris’ fourth commission from CMNW. His other works include: Meditation for Violin & Saxophone Quartet (2022), Thirty Thousand Days (2017), and Constellations (2015), as a CMNW Protégé Composer.
- CHARLES IVES Selections from “114 Songs” (1922)
CHARLES IVES (1874-1954)
Selections from 114 Songs (1922) (14’)66. The Light that is Felt
56. The Circus Band
51. Tom Sails Away
49. In Flanders Field
101. My Native Land
45. At the RiverIn the mid-1940s, Aaron Copland wrote of Charles Ives, “It will be a long time before we take the full measure of Charles Ives.” A man who spent his days selling life insurance, and who composed in virtual obscurity, isolated from almost all the prevailing musical influences of his time, Ives wrote iconoclastic music. He was a mixture of paradoxes; his old-fashioned values hardly seem like the likely impetus for his forward-looking music, and the privacy he craved in his personal life hampered his need for a public audience.
Ives wrote songs throughout his career; their subjects include idyllic New England evocations of Americana, nature, children, hymns, and WWI. The calm beauty of The Light that is Felt, based on Whittier’s poem, expresses Ives’s recurring desire to recreate a child’s sense of security. Ives’s words and boisterous musical “noise” capture a boy’s excitement at seeing and hearing The Circus Band. Ives’s text to Tom Sails Away relives childhood memories of Tom and his family; the music reflects Ives’ attitude to the war and its devastating impact. In Flanders Field sets John McCrae’s famous poem; the bitter music includes mordant quotes from well-known nationalistic tunes. My Native Land, an English translation of a Heine poem, brims with nostalgia. Ives gives the well-known hymn At the River an off-kilter setting; the melody falls away, returns to its original setting, and ends on an ambiguous question.
—© Elizabeth Schwartz
- AMY BEACH Piano Quintet in F-sharp Minor, Op. 67
AMY BEACH (1867-1944) Piano Quintet in F-sharp Minor, Op. 67 (1907) • (27’)
I. Adagio - Allegro moderato
II. Adagio espressivo
III. Allegro agitato - Adagio come prima - PrestoAmy Beach, who published under her married name, Mrs. H. H. A. Beach, was the most famous and well regarded American woman composer of her time (1867–1944). Beach grew up in a wealthy Boston family, and her musical ability declared itself early. “She played the piano at four years, memorizing everything that she heard correctly,” wrote Beach’s mother, herself a gifted pianist and singer. “Her gift for composition showed itself in babyhood before two years of age. She could . . . improvise a perfectly correct alto to any soprano air I might sing.” Beach’s prodigal piano skills led to her debut with the Boston Symphony at 16. Two years later, after her marriage to 43-year-old Dr. Henry Harris Aubrey Beach, Beach largely withdrew from public performance, at his insistence. Dr. Beach allowed his wife to continue composing, but (somewhat inexplicably) did not want her learning composition from a teacher. Other than one year of formal compositional lessons when she was 14, Beach was a composing autodidact; she studied scores and read everything she could find pertaining to harmony, theory, counterpoint, fugue, and instrumentation. Beach wrote in many genres, and a number of her works, like the Piano Quintet in F-sharp Minor, Op. 67, have entered the standard repertoire.
Beach displayed both her composing and performing skills when she premiered Opus 67 with the Hoffman Quartet in Boston’s Potter Hall on February 27, 1908. Reviews were favorable: “Truly substantial, free, variously imagined and restlessly expressive music,” and “truly modern . . . in the fashion of our time.” Critics took note of the Brahmsian influences in Beach’s writing, which were not accidental. Beach had performed Brahms’s Opus 34 in 1900; when she began writing her own piano quintet in 1907, she transformed a theme from Opus 34’s final movement into the primary melodic material for all three movements of her Opus 67. Beach’s style combines the lush Romanticism of Brahms with contemporary harmonies and a vibrant, distinctly American energy.
—© Elizabeth Schwartz
Artists
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Viano Quartet
String Ensemble
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Lucy Wang, violin
Hao Zhou, violin
Aiden Kane, viola
Tate Zawadiuk, celloPraised for their “virtuosity, visceral expression, and rare unity of intention” (Boston Globe), the Viano Quartet is one of the most sought-after ensembles today and recipients of the prestigious 2025 Avery Fisher Career Grant. Since soaring to international acclaim as the first-prize winner at the 13th Banff International String Quartet Competition, they have traveled to nearly every major city across the globe, captivating audiences in New York, London, Berlin, Hong Kong, Vancouver, Paris, Beijing, Toronto, Lucerne, and Los Angeles. They are currently in-residence at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Bowers Program from 2024-2027.
During the 2025 summer season, the quartet will debut at Klavier-Festival Ruhr, CMS Summer Evenings, Tippet Rise, and Saratoga Performing Arts Center. Their many return visits include Music@Menlo, Mt. Desert Festival of Chamber Music, and MISQA. Their latest album, Voyager, was released with Platoon Records in Spring 2025.
The Viano Quartet has collaborated with world-class musicians including Emanuel Ax, Fleur Barron, Sir Stephen Hough, Miloš Karadaglić, Mahan Esfahani, and Marc-André Hamelin. Dedicated advocates of music education, they have given classes at institutions such as Northwestern University, University of Victoria, Colburn Academy, Duke University, and SMU Meadows School of the Arts. Each member of the quartet is grateful to the interminable support from their mentors at the Curtis Institute and Colburn Conservatory, including members of the Dover, Guarneri, and Tokyo string quartets.
The name “Viano” reflects the unity of four string instruments acting as one, much like a piano, where harmony and melody intertwine.
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Anton Nel
Piano
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Anton Nel, winner of the first prize in the 1987 Naumburg International Piano Competition at Carnegie Hall, continues to enjoy a remarkable and multifaceted career that has taken him to North and South America, Europe, Asia, and South Africa. Following an auspicious debut at the age of twelve with Beethoven’s C Major Concerto after only two years of study, the Johannesburg native captured first prizes in all the major South African competitions while still in his teens, toured his native country extensively, and became a well-known radio and television personality. A student of Adolph Hallis, he made his European debut in France in 1982, and in the same year graduated with the highest distinction from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. He came to the United States in 1983, attending the University of Cincinnati, where he pursued his Master’s and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees under Bela Siki and Frank Weinstock. In addition to garnering many awards from his alma mater during this three-year period, he was a prizewinner at the 1984 Leeds International Piano Competition in England and won several first prizes at the Joanna Hodges International Piano Competition in Palm Desert in 1986.
Highlights of Mr. Nel’s four decades of concertizing include performances with the Cleveland Orchestra, the symphonies of Chicago, Dallas, San Francisco, Seattle, Detroit, and London, among many others. (He has an active repertoire of more than 100 works for piano and orchestra). An acclaimed Beethoven interpreter, Anton Nel has performed the concerto cycle several times, most notably on two consecutive evenings with the Cape Philharmonic in 2005. Additionally, he has performed all-Beethoven solo recitals, complete cycles of the violin and cello works, and most recently, a highly successful run of the Diabelli Variations as part of Moises Kaufman’s play, 33 Variations. He was also chosen to give the North American premiere of the newly discovered Piano Concerto No. 3 in E Minor by Felix Mendelssohn in 1992. Two noteworthy world premieres of works by living composers include Virtuoso Alice by David Del Tredici (dedicated to, and performed by, Mr. Nel at his Lincoln Center debut in 1988) as well as Stephen Paulus’s Piano Concerto also written for Mr. Nel; the acclaimed world premiere took place in New York in 2003.
As a recitalist, he has appeared at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Metropolitan Museum, the Frick Collection in New York, the Ambassador Auditorium in Pasadena, Davies Hall in San Francisco, and the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. Internationally, he has performed recitals in major concert halls in Canada, England (Queen Elizabeth and Wigmore Halls in London), France, Holland (Concertgebouw in Amsterdam), Japan (Suntory Hall in Tokyo), Korea, China, and South Africa.
A favorite at summer festivals he has performed at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival, as well as at the music festivals of Aspen and Ravinia (where he is on the artist-faculties), Vancouver, Cartagena, and Stellenbosch, among many others. Possessing encyclopedic chamber music and vocal repertoire, he has, over the years, regularly collaborated with many of the world’s foremost string quartets, instrumental soloists, and singers. With acclaimed violinist Sarah Chang he completed a highly successful tour of Japan as well as appearing at a special benefit concert for Live Music Now in London, hosted by HRH the Prince of Wales.
Eager to pursue dual careers in teaching and performing, he was appointed to the faculty of the University of Texas at Austin in his early twenties, followed by professorships at the Eastman School of Music and the University of Michigan, where he was chairman of the piano department. In September 2000, Anton Nel was appointed as the Priscilla Pond Flawn Regents Professor of Piano and Chamber music at the University of Texas at Austin, where he teaches an international class of students and heads the Division of Keyboard Studies. Since his return, he has also been the recipient of two Austin-American Statesman Critics Circle Awards, as well as the University Cooperative Society/College of Fine Arts award for extra-curricular achievement. In 2001 he was appointed Visiting “Extraordinary” Professor at the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa and continues to teach masterclasses worldwide. In January 2010 he became the first holder of the new Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long Endowed Chair in Piano at the University of Texas at Austin. Since 2015, he has been presenting an annual series of masterclasses in piano and chamber music at the Manhattan School of Music in New York as Visiting Professor and also teaches regularly at the Glenn Gould School in Toronto.
Mr. Nel is also an acclaimed harpsichordist and fortepianist. In recent seasons he has performed annual recitals on both instruments, concertos by the Bach family, Haydn, and Mozart with La Follia Austin Baroque as well as the Poulenc Harpsichord Concerto (Concert champêtre) with the Austin Symphony.
His recordings include four solo CDs, several chamber music recordings (including the complete Beethoven Piano and Cello Sonatas and Variations, and the Brahms Sonatas with Bion Tsang), and works for piano and orchestra by Franck, Fauré, and Saint-Saens. His latest release features premiere recordings of all the works for piano and orchestra of Edward Burlingame Hill with the Austin Symphony conducted by Peter Bay.
Anton Nel became a citizen of the United States of America on September 11, 2003, and is a Steinway Artist.
Upcoming Concerts & Events
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Fleur Barron
Mezzo-soprano
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Hailed as “a knockout performer” by The Times, Singaporean-British mezzo Fleur Barron is a passionate interpreter of opera, symphonic works, and chamber music ranging from the Baroque to the contemporary. She is currently Artistic Partner of the Orquesta Sinfonica del Principado de Asturias in Oviedo, for which she will curate and perform multiple projects across several seasons. The artist is mentored by Barbara Hannigan.
The 2024-25 season sees Fleur Barron emerge as an exciting, leading voice in Mahlerian repertoire across a series of important symphonic debuts: Das Lied von der Erde with Daniel Harding and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra on tour across Germany, with Harding and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra in Stockholm, on tour to Spain with Kent Nagano and the Hamburg Staatsorchester at the Elbphilharmonie, and at the Oregon Bach Festival; Mahler’s Des Knaben Wunderhorn with Nathalie Stutzmann and the Atlanta Symphony; Mahler’s second symphony with the Orquesta de Valencia; Rückert Lieder with PhilZuid; and the Kindertotenlieder at Het Concertgebouw’s Mahler Festival with Julius Drake.
Other orchestral engagements include Peter Lieberson’s Neruda Songs with the Hawai’i Symphony Orchestra, Saariaho’s Adriana Songs with the Turku Philharmonic Orchestra, and orchestrated Schubert songs with the Orquesta Sinfonica del Principado de Asturias.
She takes on three new opera roles: Concepción in Ravel’s L’Heure Espagnole with the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra under Ludovic Morlot (including a studio recording); Comrade Chin/Shu Fang in Huang Ruo’s M. Butterfly at the Barbican Centre directed by James Robinson; and Galatea in Handel’s Aci, Galatea e Polifemo with La Nuova Musica at Wigmore Hall.
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Chris Rogerson
Composer
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Hailed as a “confident new musical voice” (The New York Times), a “big discovery” (The Philadelphia Inquirer), and a “fully-grown composing talent” (The Washington Post), Chris Rogerson’s music has been praised for its “haunting beauty” and “virtuosic exuberance” (The New York Times). Recent notable works include Of Simple Grace, for cellist Yo-Yo Ma; Four Autumn Landscapes, a clarinet concerto written for Anthony McGill, and String Quartet No. 4, for the Escher Quartet. Rogerson’s music has been programmed at venues around the world including Carnegie Hall, the Library of Congress, the Kennedy Center, Wigmore Hall in London, and the Musikverein in Vienna.
The 2021-22 season brings several major orchestral premieres: a new piano concerto for Anne-Marie McDermott, commissioned by the Bravo! Vail Festival; a new violin concerto for Benjamin Beilman, commissioned by the Kansas City Symphony; and Sacred Earth, for mezzo-soprano J’Nai Bridges with video by Emmy-nominated director and National Geographic photographer Keith Ladzinski. Other recent commissions and performances have come from the Atlanta, Houston, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, New Jersey, New World, and San Francisco symphonies, the Buffalo Philharmonic, and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s.
Born in 1988, Mr. Rogerson studied at the Curtis Institute of Music, Yale School of Music, and Princeton University. He is represented by Young Concert Artists, Inc. and served as YCA Composer-in-Residence from 2010-2012. In 2016, Mr. Rogerson joined the Musical Studies Faculty at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where he lives full-time.
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Daniela Naomi Molnar
Poetry
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Daniela Naomi Molnar is an artist, poet, and writer working with the mediums of language, image, paint, pigment, and place. She is also a wilderness guide, educator, and eternal student. Her book CHORUS was selected by Kazim Ali as the winner of Omnidawn’s 1st /2nd Book Prize. Her work is the subject of a front-page feature in the Los Angeles Times, an Oregon Art Beat profile, and an entry in the Oregon Encyclopedia. Her poetry was recently featured in Poetry Daily. Her next book, Light / Remains, is a blend of poetry, essay, and visual art and will be out in 2025. Her visual work has been shown nationally, is in public and private collections internationally, and has been recognized by numerous grants, fellowships, and residencies. She founded the Art + Ecology program at the Pacific Northwest College of Art and helped found the backcountry artist residency, Signal Fire. A cornerstone of her practice is to be resolutely non-competitive, non-expert, and committed to always changing. She can be found in Portland, Oregon and exploring global public wildlands.