Jonathan Biss
Brentano String Quartet
Performers
Jonathan Biss, Piano
Brentano String Quartet
·· Mark Steinberg, Violin
·· Serena Canin, Violin
·· Misha Amory, Viola
·· Nina Lee, Cello
Program
BACH Selections from The Art of Fugue, BWV 1080
·· Contrapunctus I
·· Contrapunctus VII
·· Contrapunctus IV
·· Contrapunctus XI
GYÖRGY KURTÁG Selections from Játékok, Book VII
·· "Un brin de bruyère à Witold (in memorium Witold Lutoslawski)"
·· "... and once again: Shadow-play"
·· "Hommage à Farkas Ferenc 90"
·· "Fugitive thoughts about the Alberti bass"
·· "All'ongherese"
·· "Geburtstagsgruss für Nuria [... etwas verspätet...]"
BRITTEN String Quartet No. 3, Op. 94
BEETHOVEN Piano Sonata No. 32 in C Minor, Op. 111
Event Duration
The printed program will last approximately two hours, including one 20-minute intermission.This concert is made possible, in part, by an endowment fund for young artists established by Mr. and Mrs. Anthony B. Evnin and the AE Charitable Foundation.
At a Glance
Britten’s Third Quartet, written just over a year before his death in 1976, is a profoundly moving meditation on themes that had preoccupied England’s foremost composer for many years. References to his operatic masterpiece Death in Venice, which explores the relationship between homosexual love and creativity, are embedded in the score, and each of the quartet’s five movements alludes to the opera, either directly or obliquely. Around the same time, Hungarian composer György Kurtág—who is still active at age 90—launched his ongoing series of playfully imaginative musical Játékok (Games) for one and two pianos. As explorations of piano sound and technique, Játékok belongs to a long tradition of pedagogical pieces in the keyboard literature, from Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier to Bartók’s Mikrokosmos.
Bios
Jonathan Biss
Pianist Jonathan Biss shares his talent, passion, and intellectual curiosity with
classical music lovers in the concert hall and beyond. For more than two decades on the
concert stage, he has forged relationships with the New York Philharmonic, The Philadelphia
Orchestra, The Cleveland Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra,
Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra,
Budapest Festival Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and many others.
This season, Mr. Biss continues his latest Beethoven project, Beethoven/5, for
which The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra has co-commissioned five composers to write new
piano concertos, each inspired by one of Beethoven's piano concertos. The five-year plan
began last season, when Mr. Biss premiered Timo Andres's The Blind Banister, which
was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Music; he will perform the piece with the New York
Philharmonic in the spring of 2017.
In the 2016-2017 season, Mr. Biss examines, both in performance and academically, the
concept of a composer's "late style," and has put together programs of later works by Bach,
Beethoven, Brahms, Britten, Elgar, Gesualdo, Kurtág, Mozart, Schubert, and Schumann--both
for solo piano and in collaboration with the Brentano String Quartet and tenor Mark
Padmore. In addition to Carnegie Hall, he performs these programs at London's Barbican
Centre, Amsterdam's Concertgebouw, and in performances in San Francisco and at the
Philadelphia Chamber Music Society. He also gives master classes at Carnegie Hall in
connection with the "late style" project and publishes a Kindle Single on the topic in
January.
Mr. Biss has a notable recording career with recent albums for EMI winning
Diapason d'Or de l'année and Edison awards. In 2017, he will release the
sixth volume of his nine-year, nine-disk recording cycle of Beethoven's complete piano
sonatas.
Mr. Biss studied at Indiana University and the Curtis Institute of Music, where he joined
the piano faculty in 2010. He led the first massive open online course (MOOC) ever offered
by a classical music conservatory, Exploring Beethoven's Piano Sonatas, reaching
more than 150,000 people in 185 countries. His bestselling eBook Beethoven's
Shadow, published by Rosetta Books in 2011, was the first Kindle Single written by a
classical musician.
Brentano String Quartet
Since its inception in 1992, the Brentano String Quartet has appeared throughout the world
to popular and critical acclaim. Since 2014, it has served as quartet-in-residence at Yale
University. The quartet also currently serves as the collaborative ensemble for the Van
Cliburn International Piano Competition. Formerly, it was ensemble-in-residence at
Princeton University.
The quartet has performed in the world's most prestigious venues, including Carnegie Hall
and Alice Tully Hall in New York, the Library of Congress in Washington, Amsterdam's Royal
Concertgebouw, Vienna's Konzerthaus, Tokyo's Suntory Hall, and the Sydney Opera House. The
quartet had its first European tour in 1997, and was honored in the UK with the Royal
Philharmonic Award for most outstanding debut.
The Brentano String Quartet is known for especially imaginative projects that combine old
and new music. Among the quartet's latest collaborations with contemporary composers is a
new work by Steven Mackey, One Red Rose, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the
assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. Other recent commissions
include a piano quintet by Vijay Iyer, a work by Eric Moe (with soprano Christine Brandes),
and a new viola quintet by Felipe Lara (performed with violist Hsin-Yun Huang). In 2012,
the quartet provided the central music (Beethoven's Op. 131) for the critically acclaimed
independent film A Late Quartet.
The quartet has worked closely with other important composers of our time, among them
Elliott Carter, Charles Wuorinen, Chou Wen-chung, Bruce Adolphe, and György Kurtág. It has
also been privileged to collaborate with such artists as soprano Jessye Norman and pianists
Richard Goode, Jonathan Biss, and Mitsuko Uchida.
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.