Reflecting upon Classics
The internationally renowned Brentano String Quartet begin their tenure as CMNW’s 2021-22 Artists-in-Residence merging their “luxuriously warm sound and yearning lyricism” (The New York Times) with the dark expression of Haydn and Barber on the first half of this program. The Chien-Kim-Watkins Trio, consisting of CMNW Artistic Directors Gloria Chien and Soovin Kim, and Paul Watkins of the Emerson Quartet, makes its CMNW debut with Brahms’s glorious
C major piano trio.
Reed College, Kaul Auditorium
Thursday, 7/22 • 7:30 pm PT
Friday, 7/23 • 7:30 pm PT
Program
Click on any piece of music below to learn more about it.
- BACH Prelude in F Minor, BWV 881 (arranged for quartet by Mark Steinberg)
- HAYDN String Quartet in F Minor, Op. 20, No. 5
Franz Joseph Haydn (1732 - 1809)
String Quartet in F Minor, Op. 20, No. 5
We tend to think of “Papa” Haydn as a genial guy comfortably employed by music-loving Prince Esterhazy, writing for an audience of candle-lit aristocrats and maybe listening, maybe not. In spite of this casual elegant atmosphere, all was not well at the palaces. Haydn’s musicians were unhappy playing the same old stuff — Italian galante music with only one guy getting all the good tunes. Haydn was unhappy composing the same old Divertimenti, the very name precluding serious thought. Even at home, he was saddled with an unhappy wife, a poor soul with no interest in his ideas and never laughing at his jokes. What to do? Sturm und Drang was creating atmospheric pressure in literature; the restless sorrows of young Werther were in the air. But here is a hint: do the dates 1776 or 1789 ring a bell?
Since the late 1760s Haydn had been tinkering with the idea of reshaping his divertimenti. By 1771 he had published, as Op. 9 and Op. 17, 12 light and graceful offerings for a new type of ensemble. He pared the entertaining dance movements from the prevailing several down to only four, and distilled his players down as well, to simply four. The Enlightenment elegance of balance and pattern remained, the Italian lilt and grace stayed to sing, but a startling new concept rose up and re-shaped everything — equality among the players, cello belatedly included. Liberté, égalité, fratérnité. Haydn’s string quartet was the French Revolution happening right before our ears. The violin king was not guillotined, but he no longer did all the talking. As Goethe put it: the quartet became “a conversation among equals.”
With Haydn’s Op. 20 — known as the “Sun Quartets’’ from a logo printed on the first edition—the world of chamber music was forever changed. The six quartets no longer relied on melody and pleasing Italian grace, but were bursting with innovation, variety and surprise, sly tricks and dark stormy moods, singing cavatinas. Even the baroque fugue, long abjured by the Italians as too difficult or bothersome to keep track of, was resurrected, a welcome device for all four voices to vie equally with each other. After years of listeners not listening at the Esterhazy palaces, Haydn was determined that players and audience be really engaged by his music. With Opus 20, he accomplished that.
Op. 20, No. 5 was originally No. 1 but was shuffled to fifth place probably because the publisher deemed its Sturm und Drang dark, foreboding key an inappropriate way to start off the “Sun Quartets.” The listener is plunged immediately into a dark sonic environment throbbing with an undercurrent of discontented repeated notes. Clearly no idle entertainment but a whole new emotional world. The conventional sonata form can be detected but Haydn toys freely with harmonic changes and combinations. Note particularly the use of silences throughout the entire quartet. Not just at endings, which promise a forceful conclusion but suddenly dwindle away, but also with small calculated interruptions. The work is suavely peppered with these moments — Haydn perhaps checking if you are awake, maybe sometimes winking at you, but most likely just aware of the power of unexpected silence.
The minuet, ordinarily a graceful invitation to dance, is here strenuously perpendicular, almost grudgingly refusing to dance though the coquettish major-key trio seductively loosens things up. In the Adagio, a gentle siciliano, the first violin is unexpectedly indulged, given unopposed a chance to sing a cavatina with ‘improvisatory’ arabesques. At the end the instruments sing in unison with subtly amusing gentle hesitations. The final fugue proceeds not with mathematical Prussian deliberation but as a lively Viennese scramble, the voices chasing each other about instead of each waiting its turn, playful as a pile of puppies — a long journey away from the earnest moody beginning — Haydn showing off.
We take string quartets now for granted; they have held center stage in chamber music for over 200 hundred years. But remember: once they did not even exist. Haydn began it all — a revolutionary act of the imagination, almost like the inventing a use for the wheel. The sun of the Op.20 Sun Quartets has proven not just a logo, but a shining blessing.
— Frederick Noonan
- SAMUEL BARBER “Dover Beach”
SAMUEL BARBER (1901-1981) Dover Beach
Copyright, 1936, by G. Schirmer, Inc. International Copyright Secured. Synchronization rights licensed from G. Schirmer, Inc. Used with permission.- BRAHMS Piano Trio No. 2 in C Major, Op.87
2021 Summer Festival Program Book
Artists
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Brentano String Quartet
String Quartet
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Mark Steinberg, violin
Serena Canin, violin
Misha Amory, viola
Nina Lee, celloWith a career spanning over three decades, the Brentano Quartet has appeared throughout the world to popular and critical acclaim. The New York Times extols its “luxuriously warm sound [and] yearning lyricism; and The Times (London) hails their “wonderful, selfless music-making.” Known for its unique sensibility, probing interpretive style, and original programming, the quartet has performed across five continents in the world’s most prestigious venues and festivals, thus establishing itself as one of the world’s preeminent ensembles.
Dedicated and highly sought after as educators, the quartet has served as Artists-in-Residence at the Yale School of Music for the past decade. They also lead the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival and appear regularly at the Taos School of Music. Previously, the quartet served for fifteen years as Ensemble-in-Residence at Princeton University.
In the 2025-26 concert season, the quartet will tour throughout North America, including concerts in New York, Boston, Chicago, Vancouver, Detroit, San Francisco, and Denver. They will perform the complete Mozart quintets with violist Hsin-Yun Huang in Philadelphia. Further afield, they will tour Spain in November 2025 and elsewhere in Europe in March 2026.
Formed in 1992, The Brentano Quartet has received numerous accolades, including, in 1995, the prestigious Naumburg and Cleveland Quartet Awards. They have been privileged to collaborate with such artists as sopranos Jessye Norman and Dawn Upshaw; mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato; as well as pianists Mitsuko Uchida and Jonathan Biss. The quartet has commissioned works from some of the most important composers of our time, including Bruce Adolphe, Matthew Aucoin, Gabriela Frank, Stephen Hartke, Vijay Iyer, Steven Mackey, Charles Wuorinen, Lei Liang, James MacMillan, and Melinda Wagner.
Notable recordings include Beethoven’s String Quartet, Op. 131 (Aeon) which was featured in the 2012 film, A Late Quartet, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and Christopher Walken, and a 2017 live album with Joyce DiDonato, Into the Fire—Live from Wigmore Hall (Warner). Their most recent release features the K. 428 and K. 465 (“Dissonance”) quartets of Mozart for the Azica label.
The quartet is named for Antonie Brentano, whom many scholars consider to be Beethoven’s “Immortal Beloved,” the intended recipient of his famous love confession.
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Gloria Chien
Piano & Artistic Director
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Taiwanese-born pianist Gloria Chien has one of the most diverse musical lives as a noted performer, concert presenter, and educator. She made her orchestral debut at the age of sixteen with the Boston Symphony Orchestra with Thomas Dausgaard, and she performed again with the BSO with Keith Lockhart. She was subsequently selected by The Boston Globe as one of its Superior Pianists of the year, “who appears to excel in everything.” In recent seasons, she has performed as a recitalist and chamber musician at Alice Tully Hall, the Library of Congress, the Dresden Chamber Music Festival, and the National Concert Hall in Taiwan. She performs frequently with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. In 2009, she launched String Theory, a chamber music series in Chattanooga, Tennessee that has become one of the region’s premier classical music presenters. The following year she was appointed director of the Chamber Music Institute at Music@Menlo, a position she held for the next decade.
In 2017, she joined her husband, violinist Soovin Kim, as artistic director of the Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival in Burlington, Vermont. The duo became artistic directors at Chamber Music Northwest in Portland, Oregon in 2020. They were named recipients of Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Award for Extraordinary Service in 2021 for their efforts during the pandemic.
Most recently, Gloria was named Advisor of the newly launched Institute for Concert Artists at the New England Conservatory of Music. Gloria released two albums—her Gloria Chien LIVE from the Music@Menlo LIVE label and Here With You with acclaimed clarinetist Anthony McGill on Cedille Records.
Gloria received her bachelor, master’s, and doctoral degrees at the New England Conservatory of Music with Wha Kyung Byun and Russell Sherman. She is Artist-in-Residence at Lee University in Cleveland, Tennessee, and she is a Steinway Artist.
Upcoming Concerts & Events
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Soovin Kim
2025 YAI Faculty, Violin & Artistic Director
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Soovin Kim enjoys a broad musical career regularly performing Bach sonatas and Paganini caprices for solo violin, sonatas for violin and piano ranging from Beethoven to Ives, Mozart, and Haydn concertos and symphonies as a conductor, and new world-premiere works almost every season. When he was 20 years old, Kim received first prize at the Paganini International Violin Competition. He immersed himself in the string quartet literature for 20 years as the 1st violinist of the Johannes Quartet. Among his many commercial recordings are his “thrillingly triumphant” (Classic FM Magazine) disc of Paganini’s demanding 24 Caprices and a two-disc set of Bach’s complete solo violin works that were released in 2022.
Kim is the founder and artistic director of the Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival (LCCMF) in Burlington, Vermont. In addition to its explorative programming and extensive work with living composers, LCCMF created the ONE Strings program through which all 3rd through 5th grade students of the Integrated Arts Academy in Burlington study violin. The University of Vermont recognized Soovin Kim’s work by bestowing an Honorary Doctorate upon him in 2015. In 2020, he and his wife, pianist Gloria Chien, became artistic directors of Chamber Music Northwest in Portland, Oregon. He, with Chien, were awarded Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s 2021 CMS Award for Extraordinary Service to Chamber Music. Kim devotes much of his time to his passion for teaching at the New England Conservatory in Boston and the Yale School of Music in New Haven.
Upcoming Concerts & Events
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Paul Watkins
Cello
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Acclaimed for his inspirational performances and eloquent musicianship, Paul Watkins enjoys a distinguished career as concerto soloist, chamber musician and conductor.
He is the Artistic Director of the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival in Detroit (since 2014), the cellist of the Emerson String Quartet (2013-2023) and Visiting Professor of Cello at Yale School of Music (since 2018). He took first prize in the 2002 Leeds Conducting Competition, and has held the positions of Music Director of the English Chamber Orchestra and Principal Guest Conductor of the Ulster Orchestra.
As a cellist, Watkins has given regular concerto performances with prestigious orchestras across the globe. Also, a dedicated chamber musician, Watkins was a member of the Nash Ensemble (1997-2013) and the Emerson String Quartet (2013-2023). After 44 successful seasons, the quartet decided to retire, and undertook an extensive series farewell tours, culminating in their final performances in New York Lincoln Center in October 2023. This concert was filmed for a documentary by filmmaker Tristan Cook, and the release of their final recording of Berg, Chausson, Schoenberg, and Hindemith with prestigious guests soprano Barbara Hannigan and pianist Bertrand Chamayou.
As a conductor, Watkins has conducted all the major British orchestras and a wide range of international orchestras. In 2006 he made his opera debut conducting a critically praised new production of Poulenc’s La Voix Humaine for Opera North.