Part of: Perspectives: Janine Jansen and Great Artists I
Perspectives: Janine Jansen
The second of Grieg’s three sonatas for violin and piano is suffused with his love of Norway’s landscape and popular culture. The work’s cheery, folk-like dance themes and allusions to Hardanger fiddling are characteristic of the nationalist phase of his career. Grieg later distanced himself from his youthful “Norwegian passion,” saying that he aimed to express “that which is individual. If the result is national, that is because the individual is national.”
Debussy’s last completed work, the Violin Sonata was part of an ambitious project to recapture the clarity and balance that the quintessentially Gallic composer associated with France’s musical patrimony. (On the sonata’s title page, Debussy proudly signed himself as a musicien français.) The colorful, lighthearted score—which he described as “full of a joyous tumult”—betrays no hint of the fatal illness that would end Debussy’s life a few months later.
Like Chausson’s famous Poème for Violin and Orchestra, this exuberantly romantic work was written for the great Belgian violinist Eugène Ysaÿe. Despite his Wagnerian sympathies, Chausson had come to believe, like Debussy, that he and his contemporaries should emulate the purity and refinement of masters like Rameau and Couperin. The title of the Concert, as well as many of its tempo markings, reflect the standard usage of the 18th century.
A violinist with an enviable international reputation, Janine Jansen works with the world’s preeminent orchestras and conductors. This season, in addition to curating her Carnegie Hall Perspectives series, she tours with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra under Daniele Gatti, London Symphony Orchestra under Michael Tilson Thomas and Semyon Bychkov, and Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen under Paavo Järvi.
Further highlights of Ms. Jansen’s 2017–2018 season include engagements with the Berliner Philharmoniker (also under Paavo Järvi), Munich Philharmonic under Zubin Mehta, Staatskapelle Dresden under Sir Antonio Pappano, The Philadelphia Orchestra and Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra under Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Czech Philharmonic under Jakub Hrůša, Oslo Philharmonic and Vienna Symphony under David Afkham, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra under Karina Canellakis, and Iceland Symphony Orchestra under Daniel Blendulf. She also travels to Asia and Australasia to perform with the Singapore, Sydney, and New Zealand symphony orchestras.
A devoted chamber musician, Ms. Jansen joins Mischa Maisky, Lily Maisky, Martha Argerich, and Itamar Golan for a major European chamber music tour this season. She also performs recitals throughout Europe with pianists Alexander Gavrylyuk, Elisabeth Leonskaja, and Kathryn Stott. Ms. Jansen is founder of the hugely successful International Chamber Music Festival Utrecht; in June 2016, after 13 years, she stepped down from her position as artistic director and named cellist Harriet Krijgh her successor.
As an exclusive recording artist for Decca Classics, Ms. Jansen has achieved great success on the digital music charts, particularly since the 2003 release of her acclaimed recording of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons. Her latest release, conducted by Sir Antonio Pappano, features Bartók’s Violin Concerto No. 1 with the London Symphony Orchestra and Brahms’s Violin Concerto with the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia.
Ms. Jansen has won numerous prizes, including four Edison Klassiek awards, four ECHO Klassik awards, the Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik, the NDR Musikpreis for outstanding artistic achievement, and the Concertgebouw Prize. She has also been awarded the VSCD Klassieke Muziekprijs for individual achievement and the Royal Philharmonic Society Instrumentalist Award for performances in the United Kingdom. She studied with Coosje Wijzenbeek, Philippe Hirschhorn, and Boris Belkin.
Ms. Jansen plays the 1707 Stradivarius “Rivaz, Baron Gutmann” violin, kindly on loan from Dextra Musica.
The Dover Quartet catapulted to international stardom following a stunning sweep of the 2013 Banff Centre International String Quartet Competition. Recent winner of Chamber Music America’s Cleveland Quartet Award and the coveted Avery Fisher Career Grant, the Dover Quartet has become one of the most in-demand ensembles in the world. With its burnished warmth, incisive rhythms, and natural phrasing, the quartet’s distinctive sound has helped secure its status as one of the great ensembles performing today.
During the 2017–2018 season, the Dover Quartet performs more than 100 concerts at venues that include the University of Texas Performing Arts Center, John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Library of Congress, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, and Chamber Music Society of Detroit. The quartet also continues its multi-year residencies with the Walton Arts Center’s Artosphere Festival, Amelia Island Chamber Music Festival, and Peoples’ Symphony Concerts. Cedille Records released the quartet’s sophomore album, Voices of Defiance, in October 2017. The recording takes listeners on a powerful journey through works written during World War II by Viktor Ullmann, Dmitri Shostakovich, and Simon Laks. The 2016–2017 season saw the release of the Dover Quartet’s all-Mozart debut recording on Cedille, which was a nod to the 1965 debut album of Guarneri Quartet, whose founding violist, Michael Tree, joined the quartet on the recording.
The Dover Quartet’s members studied at the Curtis Institute of Music and Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music, where they received extensive mentorship from Shmuel Ashkenasi, James Dunham, Norman Fischer, Kenneth Goldsmith, Joseph Silverstein, Arnold Steinhardt, Peter Wiley, and Mr. Tree. The quartet returned to Rice for a residency from 2011 to 2013, and in 2013 and 2014 it became Curtis’s first quartet-in-residence. In 2015, the Dover Quartet was appointed the first resident ensemble in the 116-year history of Peoples’ Symphony Concerts, New York City’s oldest concert series. The quartet serves as the quartet-in-residence for the Bienen School of Music at Northwestern University.
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