UMS Concert Program, January 27, 1980: The Concord String Quartet --

Season: 101st
Concert: Forty-first
Rackham Auditorium, Ann Arbor, Michigan

_!TnteifLatipnal Presentations
THE UNIVERSITY MUSICAL SOCIETY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
The Concord String Quartet
MARK SOKOL, Violinist JOHN KOCHANOWSKI, Violist
ANDREW JENNINGS, Violinist NORMAN FISCHER, Cellist LESLIE GUINN, Baritone
Sunday Evening, January 27, 1980, at 8:30 Rackham Auditorium, Ann Arbor, Michigan
PROGRAM
Quartet in E-flat major, K. 428..........Mozart
Allegro ma non troppo Andante con moto Menuetto: allegretto Allegro vivace
?String Quartet No. 7 (with Baritone)......George Rochberg
Poems by Paul Rochberg "The beast of night"--dramatic and intense "Floating in a dream"--somnambulistic, lyric, gentle "Cavalry"--a surrealistic war scene "And when the dream had faded"--yearning, expressive, dramatic
Leslie Guinn
INTERMISSION
Quartet No. IS in A minor, Op. 132........Beethoven
Assai sostenuto; allegro Allegro, ma non troppo Molto adagio; andante Alia marcia, assai vivace Allegro appassionato
Nonesuch, CRI, Vox, and Turnabout Records.
The String Quartet No. 7 receives its world premiere this evening and bears the following inscription: "Dedicated to my friend, Leslie Guinn--commissioned in honor of the Centennial of the School of Music of The University of Michigan (1880-1980) from funds supplied by the Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies and the Oliver Ditson Fund of the School of Music."
101st Season -Forty-first Concert
Seventeenth Annual Chamber Arts Series
PROGRAM NOTES by the composer
String Quartet No. 7 (with Baritone)......George Rochberg
"I wrote my seventh string quartet between June 8 and September 20, 1979, for Leslie Guinn, baritone, and the Concord String Quartet on commission from The University of Michigan to honor the centennial of its School of Music.
"The texts I chose for this work are from poems by my son Paul, who died at the age of twenty in 1964. These particular poems have long been among my favorites because of their dark beauty and sharply chiseled images. I carried certain lines with me for years--not because my son had written them, but because they were powerful verbal icons that had struck off the sparks of truth about existence. I knew they were as true for Paul's experience as for my own and others' who have walked the strange borderlands between waking and sleeping, life and death. They are, each in its own way, strange word-dreams full of the knowledge of love--but also full of fear and terror; yet everything resolves in understanding and pain is washed away.
"I have tried to treat the voice and the quartet as integral parts of an ensemble, giving the voice and the instruments an equal share in the projection of musical and dramatic ideas. The quartet frequently accompanies the voice (colla voce) but just as frequently acts independently of the voice or establishes the texture within which the voice is heard as a common bond."
Texts by Paul Rochberg
The beast of night Dark furred Bares teeth and claws Of leafless branches Laps at the light I carry.
Grows on the agar of imaginings. Swells with the gases Of will o' the wisp swamps. And again I am a child Of fears and dread Of the dark furred night. Refrain: And I cast no shadow on waves or sand
Over the softly rolling hills of rotted cereal boxes and bailing wire Come the cavalry The bugle sounds
and waving the banners slap redly at the whipping dust
Their steeds of blackened barrel staves hooves of shiny new flatirons leaving dead rats and broken lightbulbs bloodied in the mire
Their redburning eyes of a monstrous dragonfly bicycle reflectors stare out turning to flaming blood all those under their gaze
Their uniforms proudly bear
crepe paper of the purple and the gold
A most impressive sight
their bottle tops and rivets
shoelaces and telephones
Their helmets porcelained
sightless behind shattered spectacles
II
Floating in a dream
I am lost in it
The world goes before me.
Floating in a dream
I am real in it
Real for the world
Of my dreams.
Floating
Beyond unreality
To step from the mirror
I am.
Swimming in this life
I am.
brains wired to forgotten dress dummies sauerkraut in plastic bags
Drive them on across the field of
to an unseen battle
sword of picket fences
they brandish in rusty eggbeaters
The lances railroads
tooped by soup stained ascots
the lancers at attention
pierce the sky, their lances seagullroosted
The horses puff black clouds of flies under the loading hook spurs whose boots stovepipes
Nailed broomsticks switch on charred backs The general, highest on his, tubercular calf locked in a potbellied stove red heat
a cat o'nine tails of rat's bones and spitting cobras Who would touch him
The charge
foe the horror
red in the sky black in the sky
green bloodfire close the stars
The battle
into the river shrank back quivering
evaporating burning hissing
And when the dream had faded
Into a yellow green cloud
I knew
That I had let
A thousand other lives
Fall from my hand
Like the cat, who this morning
Slipped through my arms --
A drop of mercury
That shattered on the floor
Into millions of stars
I could never recover.
unwilling to give ground
mixing hermit crabs and palpitating
orange peels
almost tearing
gieat stones piled up
And in the morning a little girl's lost doll thought in the new forest
That we saw
and one dented stove pipe
with a hand
IV
And when the dream was red
I was a dragon
Who tore his cobweb bones
Into galaxies of needles
To sting myself,
And for one night only
To sharpen his claws
Against the gate of Heaven
Refrain: And I cast no shadow on waves or sand
About the Artists
Founded in 1971, the Concord String Quartet received the prestigious Walter W. Naumberg Chamber Music Award that same year. Part of the award was to commission a piece, whereupon began the Quartet's happy association with composer George Rochbcrg. In May of 1972 the Quartet premiered Rochberg's Quartet No. 3 at their Alice Tully Hall debut recital, and since then has won worldwide recognition as one of the finest ensembles of our time. As Quartet-in-Residence at Dartmouth College; they combine teaching duties with radio and television appearances, recordings, and constant traveling that takes them annually to about one hundred cities in the United States and abroad. The Quartet is noted for both the size and scope of its repertoire--they frequently perform the complete quartets of Beethoven, Schubert, and Bartok, as well as other standard literature, and as champions of American music they have given world premieres of more than fifty works. This evening's concert, the Quartet's second in Ann Arbor, is being broadcast live by the University's public radio station, WUOMWVGR, and carried simultaneously by VVCMU in Mt. Pleasant, WKAR in East Lansing, WFBE in Flint, WMUK in Kalamazoo, and WDET in Detroit.
Leslie Cuinn, a native Texan, has won a prominent place in the musical world. He has appeared s soloist with such major orchestras as the Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore, and Los Angeles with which he sang the West Coast premiere of Benjamin Britten's "War Requiem." His opera performances have included leading roles with the New York City Center productions, he has sung Renaissance drama with the New York Pro Musica, and has premiered new music with the Contemporary Chamber Ensemble. Festival audiences have heard him at Saratoga, Marlboro, Tanglewood, Grant Park, and at our Ann Arbor May Festival. He recently won second prize in the John F. Kennedy-Rockefeller Foundation International Competitions for Excellence in the Per?formance of American music, which included a one-hour recital as the final competition and was broadcast and telecast live by National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service. Mr. Guinn successfully combines his performing schedule with teaching duties at the U-M's School of Music where he has served on the faculty since 1971.
George Rochberg:, a Philadelphian who teaches at the University of Pennsylvania, has a reputation as both an atonalist and a Romantic, versed in both contemporary and traditional styles of music. More than thirty years ago he joined the ranks of serialist composers who have dominated composition since World War II. He won honors for his chromatic symphonies and chamber music, but in the last decade returned to the classical tradition of melody and tonality. To celebrate his 60th birthday, Rochberg created his "Concord Quartets," three works written between December 1977 and August 1978 and, as the title indicates, were composed for and dedicated to the Concord Quirtet. Taking as his example the great classical composers--Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven--who conceived and wrote their chamber music in sets, Rochberg designed the "Concord Quartets" to be played either individually or as a complete sequence in one sitting. It was the latter way in which they were given their world premiere in Philadelphia in January 1979 and performed again in the same month in New York's Alice Tully Hall by the Concord Quartet. Mr. Rochberg's most recent composition, commissioned by the U-M School of Music for world premiere by the Concord Quartet this evening, is described within this program in his own words.
Important Concert Changes
Two attractions in our current season have recently cancelled their tours to the United States: the Glinka Chorus of Leningrad and the Krasnayarsk Dancers from Siberia, scheduled for January 29 and February 29 respectively. We're pleased to announce the following groups as replacements on the same dates:
Roger Wagner Chorale--foremost among American choral ensembles for three decades (replacing Glinka Chorus, same date, Tues. Jan. 29 at 8:30, Hill Auditorium)
Massenkoff Russian Folk Festival--Nikolai Massenkoff, bass, and his California-based ensemble of folk dancers and balalaika players, all of Russian heritage, in a program spanning a thousand years of Russian history--ballads, war songs, love songs, dances (replacing Krasnayarsk Dancers, same date, Fri. Feb. 29 at 8:30, Hill Auditorium) Glinka Chorus tickets should be used for admission to the Wagner Chorale, and
Krasnayarsk tickets for the Massenkoff Folk Festival. Additional tickets are also
available for both concerts. Ticket exchanges, if desired, may be made up to two days
prior to each performance.
Roger Wagner Chorale (replacing Glinka Chorus) . . . Tues. Jan. 29
The Feld Ballet...........Fri.-Sun. Feb. 1-3
Orpheus Chamber Ensemble.........Fri. Feb. 8
Grieg: Holbcrg Suite; Mozart: Serenade No. 12 for Woodwinds, K. 388,
and Symphony No. 29; Stravinsky: "Dumbarton Oaks" Concerto.
Leontyne Price, Soprano..........Sat. Feb. 9
Zurich Chamber Orchestra.........Fri. Feb. 15
Boyce: Symphony No. 3; Moret: Suite (1979) ; Stravinsky: Apollon
Musagete; Pergolesi: Concertino No. 2.
Jean-Pierre Rampal, Flutist; Alexandre Lagoya, Guitarist . Mon. Feb. 18 Aldo Ciccolini, Pianist..........Thurs. Feb. 21
Music of Satie, Debussy, and Liszt. Founders Day Concert..........Sun. Feb. 24
The Festival Chorus, Donald Bryant, Conductor; Handel's Israel in Egypt.
Carlotta Wilsen, Soprano; Rosemary Russell, Contralto; John McCollum,
Tenor; Willis Patterson, Bass; with members of University Symphony
Orchestra.
Cuban Folk Ensemble..........Tues. Feb. 26
Massenkoff Russian Folk Festival
(replacing Krasnayarsk Dancers)........Fri. Feb. 29
Elly Ameling, Soprano..........Wed. Mar. 12
Royal Dancers & Musicians of Bhutan......Sat. Mar. IS
Jury's Irish Cabaret of Dublin........Tues. Mar. 18
Yehudi and Hephzibah Menuhin, Violinist & Pianist . . . Wed. Mar. 19
Brahms: Sonata No. 2 in A major; Bach: Partita No. 3; Franck: Sonata
in A major; Bartok: Rumanian Dances; Debussy: La Fille aux cheveux de
lin; Wieniawski: Scherzo and Tarantelle. New World String Quartet.........Wed. Mar. 26
World premiere of Leslie Bassett's recently-commissioned Quartet No. 4. Baltimore Symphony Orchestra Sergiu Comissiona . . . Wed. Apr. 2
Mozart: Sinfonia Concertante for Woodwinds; Borodin: Polovtzian Dances
from Prince Igor (with the Festival Chorus) ; Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 2.
Sherrill Milnes, Baritone.........Mon. Apr. 14
Quartetto Italiano...........Thurs. Apr. 17
Ann Arbor May Festival........Wed.-Sat. Apr. 23-26
UNIVERSITY MUSICAL SOCIETY
Burton Memorial Tower, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109 Phones: 665-3717, 764-2538