SPOTLIGHT RECITAL: Viano Quartet
The virtuosic Viano Quartet—our Protégé Ensemble last year—returns to our Summer Festival with an international noontime musical feast of Hungarian (Bartók) and Czech (Smetana) masterpieces, plus the world premiere of 24-year-old Iranian-American composer Kian Ravaei’s new string quartet, co-commissioned by CMNW.
PSU, College of the Arts, Lincoln Recital Hall
Tuesday, 7/25 • 12:00 pm
Program
Click on any piece of music below to learn more about it.
- KIAN RAVAEI “The Little Things” for String Quartet (2023)
KIAN RAVAEI (b. 1999)
The Little Things (2023)
CMNW Co-Commission - World Premiere1. I’ll Tell You How the Sun Rose
2. High From the Earth I Heard a Bird
3. Two Butterflies Went Out at Noon
4. A Narrow Fellow in the Grass
5. The Moon Was but a Chin of Gold
6. A Spider Sewed at Night
7. If I Can Stop One Heart From BreakingAll seven titles which comprise The Little Things come from Emily Dickinson, who never fails to direct our attention toward nature’s easily overlooked wonders. Movements II, III, IV, and VI evoke various animal life, while I and V portray the sun and moon respectively. The order of the movements suggests the cyclic journey of all living things from morning to night to a new morning.
In the final movement, we hear the voice of Nature singing Dickinson’s famous lines:
If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.
- BÉLA BARTÓK String Quartet No. 3, Sz. 85 (1927)
BELA BARTÓK (1881-1945)
String Quartet No.3, Sz. 85 (1927) (16’)I. Moderato
II. Allegro
III. Moderation
IV. Allegro moltoWhen Béla Bartók wrote his String Quartet No. 3 in the fall of 1927, ten years had passed since he had finished another quartet. His previous quartet (No. 2) abounded with music influenced by his study of Eastern European folk songs. In the case of his third quartet, it has been suggested that a 1926 performance of Alban Berg’s Lyric Suite inspired Bartók to put pen to paper. Whether that particular concert played a role or not, Bartók’s third quartet certainly echoes the expressionist, twelve-tone sounds of Berg and his circle.
Shortly after finishing the quartet, Bartók embarked on a ten-week tour of the United States, where, among other appearances, he debuted as a pianist with the New York Philharmonic. He also heard about a composition contest sponsored by the Musical Fund Society of Philadelphia. To Bartók’s surprise, his Third String Quartet went on to win the $6,000 prize – equivalent to roughly $100,000 in 2023 dollars. “You can hardly imagine the sensation this caused in Budapest,” he wrote to a friend. “Six thousand dollars! I told everybody, from the very outset, that it couldn’t be as much as that – but to no effect; it is by now common knowledge that I have won 6,000.” The Musical Fund Society were not alone in their admiration for Bartók’s Third Quartet; Theodor Adorno, for example, described it as “unquestionably the best of the Hungarian’s works to date.”
Although Bartók divided this extremely concentrated quartet (his shortest) into two parts, its structure more closely resembles a single movement with two primary thematic sections. The first section darts between sparse, interjecting melodic fragments, while the second oscillates between rapid-fire scales and sharp rhythmic outbursts. Bartók then revisits both sections, first recapitulating excerpts from the first, then evoking the second’s rancorous energy in a final coda.
A particular point of interest is Bartók’s use of extended techniques, or nontraditional ways of playing the instruments. Examples include glissandi (slides), sul ponticello (playing very close to the bridge), and col legno (playing with the wooden back side of the bow), each drawing new sounds from traditional instruments.
—© Ethan Allred
- SMETANA String Quartet No. 1 in E Minor (“From My Life”)
BEDŘICH SMETANA (1824-1884)
String Quartet No. 1 (From My Life) (28’)I. Allegro vivo appassionato
II. Allegro moderato á la Polka
III. Largo sostenuto
IV. VivaceBedřich Smetana’s String Quartet No. 1 in E minor, subtitled “From My Life,” chronicles the composer’s grief over the loss of several family members, as well as his own failing health.
The turbulence of the Allegro vivo eloquently expresses both the tragedies of Smetana’s personal life and the heightened Romanticism of his youth. “The first movement depicts my youthful leanings towards art, the Romantic atmosphere, the inexpressible yearning for something I could neither express nor define, also a kind of premonition of my future misfortune,” wrote Smetana. “The long, insistent note in the finale … is the fateful ringing in my ears of the high-pitched tones which, in 1874, came to herald my deafness.”
The energetic polka in the second movement “recalls the joyful days of my youth when I composed dance tunes and was known everywhere as a passionate lover of dancing,” Smetana wrote. The Largo embodies Smetana’s love for his first wife Kateřina and foreshadows her untimely death. In the Vivace, Smetana celebrates his Czech heritage, “the discovery that I could treat national elements in music and my joy in following this path.” Partway through, the sigh motif from the first movement returns, signaling, in Smetana’s words, “the catastrophe of the onset of my deafness, the outlook into the sad future, the tiny rays of hope of recovery; but, remembering all the promise of my early career, a feeling of painful regret.”
—© 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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Kian Ravaei
Composer, Protégé Alumni
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Composer Kian Ravaei (b. 1999) takes tone painting to a new level, synthesizing diverse inspirations into evocative musical portraits. Whether he is composing a string quartet inspired by wonders of the natural world, electronic music that evokes the pulsating energy of late-night dance clubs, or a symphonic poem that draws from the Iranian music of his ancestral heritage, he takes listeners on a spellbinding tour of humanity’s most deeply felt emotions.
The 2025-26 season sees a variety of performances, including the New York premiere of Ravaei’s Gulistan at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, as well as two new string quartets for the Abeo Quartet and Sheffield Chamber Players. He has been named a 2025-26 Classeek Ambassador Programme Artist, and will partake in a one-year career enhancement program alongside six of the world’s most promising classical musicians.
From Carnegie Hall to Pierre Boulez Saal, sought-after musicians such as Grammy Award winner Fleur Barron, Performance Today Classical Woman of the Year Lara Downes, and New York Philharmonic clarinetist Anthony McGill have brought Ravaei’s music to global stages. The Alexander String Quartet capped their 44-year career with a farewell tour that featured Ravaei’s seven-movement string quartet The Little Things. His works have been commissioned by prominent chamber music organizations—among them Seattle Chamber Music Society and Chamber Music Northwest—as well as the American Composers Orchestra, where he is currently a resident CoLABoratory Fellow.
Notable honors include a Copland House CULTIVATE Fellowship—during which he participated in an emerging composers institute at Aaron Copland’s National Historic Landmark home—as well as commissioning grants from Chamber Music America, New Music USA, and the Barlow Endowment. Ravaei’s rapidly expanding catalog has earned him first prize awards in the New York Youth Symphony First Music Chamber Music Competition, the Foundation for Modern Music Robert Avalon Competition, and the Zodiac International Music Competition.
Born to Iranian immigrants, Ravaei maintains close ties to the Iranian community in his hometown of Los Angeles. Many of his works combine the ornamented melodies of Iranian classical music with the colorful harmonies of Western classical music. Mezzo-soprano Fleur Barron and pianist Kunal Lahiry commissioned Ravaei to compose a Persian-language setting of the feminist Iranian poet Forough Farrokhzad for their U.S. tour, culminating in a sold-out Carnegie Hall recital. A passionate speaker, Ravaei was a featured lecturer at the UCLA Iranian Music Lecture Series, where he discussed his multicultural upbringing and its deep-seated influence on his music.
Just days into the COVID-19 lockdown, Ravaei began a daily ritual of playing a Bach chorale at the piano and composing an original chorale in response. What started as a way to ground himself during a period of emotional turbulence blossomed into an artistic reawakening. Over the course of one year and three hundred sixty-five chorales, Ravaei cultivated a “rich harmonic idiom” (Washington Classical Review) rooted in a centuries-long tradition.
As part of his residencies at chamber music festivals across the Western hemisphere, Ravaei engages with local audiences through educational presentations, musical performances, and community events. He was a resident composer at Chamber Music Northwest through their Protégé Project, and later became the inaugural composer-in-residence at Sunkiss’d Mozart. Through a trailblazing partnership between the Wyoming International Chamber Music Festival and the Tenby International Music Festival, Ravaei serves as composer-in-residence of both festivals, helping to foster musical dialogue between the United States and United Kingdom.
Millions of classical radio listeners have heard Ravaei’s music on the airwaves, from New York’s WQXR to Los Angeles’s KUSC. As part of Classical California’s 2024 Ultimate Playlist, the nation’s largest public radio listenership ranked Ravaei’s piece Latif in 26th place—sandwiched between Elgar’s Enigma Variations and Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto—making him the only living composer in the top 30. His music has been featured on award-winning radio programs such as APM’s Performance Today and WNYC’s New Sounds, as well as his personally curated streaming station for Classical Music Indy.
With numerous commercial recordings, Ravaei has earned critical acclaim from outlets including Gramophone, Bandcamp Daily, and I CARE IF YOU LISTEN. His compositions appear on albums such as Lara Downes’ This Land—a poignant reflection on American identity—and Tallā Rouge’s genre-bending debut Shapes in Collective Space. Fans of electronic dance music will hear Ravaei’s orchestration in the official orchestral arrangement of Wooli & Codeko’s “Crazy (feat. Casey Cook),” which has garnered over two hundred thousand views across streaming platforms.
Choreographers have tapped into Ravaei’s music as a source of inspiration, transforming his vivid sound worlds into dance. They include Marla Phelan—whose innovative fusion of dance and video projections set to Ravaei’s immersive electronic score premiered at the Juilliard Future Stages Festival—and Carly Topazio, who captivated audiences with her choreography to Ravaei’s Family Photos during a joint performance by Art of Elan and The Rosin Box Project. Most recently, Ravaei and choreographer Annie Kahane completed a three-year project to combine Persian and Jewish musical and dance traditions, which debuted at the San Francisco International Arts Festival.Inspired by the generosity of his own teachers—celebrated composers such as Valerie Coleman, Richard Danielpour, and Derrick Skye—Ravaei pays forward his musical training by empowering others to embrace their creativity. He recently launched the Wales-Wyoming Workshops Composer Fellowship, a tuition-free program for early-career composers from the U.S. and U.K. to gain transatlantic exposure through performance and recording opportunities. In previous years, Ravaei taught composition to historically underserved students as a Composer Teaching Artist Fellow for the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and also held a teaching position at the Indiana University Jacobs Composition Academy, where he mentored composers aged 17 to 70.
Ravaei’s own musical journey has led him eastward from the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music and the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music to the heart of New York City, where he is currently a C.V. Starr Doctoral Fellow at The Juilliard School.