Presidential Chamber Music Series I - String Quartets

Mon, 09/20/2010 - 7:30pm
Free
Macey Center - Directions


Sponsored by

Violist Willy Sucre will be joined by violinists Roberta Arruda and Carol Swift-Matton with Joan Zucker on cello, performing works by Janacek and Beethoven.

The program should include Leoš Janácek was a Czech composer, musical theorist, folklorist, publicist and teacher. He was born in Hukvaldy, Moravia on July 3, 1854 and died in Ostrava, on August 12, 1928.

String Quartet No. 2
“Intimate Pages”

by Leoš Janáček

 

I. Andante con moto - Allegro
II. Adagio - Vivace

III. Moderato - Adagio - Allegro

IV. Allegro - Andante - Adagio

 

 

Perfection is a goal - it could be said the goal - of most creators; Janáček was no exception in his “yearning for the ideal.” Clearly, he viewed work and study as the path to that unattainable mark. The composer was fascinated by sounds of nature and rhythms of peasant speech. His exercises in notating words and phrases led to his developing the notion of short, pithy musical “cells.” These became a mainstay of his musical language. Vocal music was another source of the unmistakable Janacek style. In his boyhood years, he was a chorister, and he later became a choral conductor. His fascination for language and his experience with the human voice may well explain why his musical speech is the most expansive and personal in his ten operas.

Although “Intimate Pages” is numbered the second of Janacek’s quartets, it is actually the third. The first effort, made early in his life in 1880, has been lost. It took Janacek only three weeks in early 1928 to compose “Intimate Pages”; the first performance, on September 11 that year, occurred a month after his death. The title refers to his infatuation, In the last years of his life, with the very young Kamila Stösslová the work was intended to be reflective of his passion. He abjured his original title, “Love Letters,” because (as he wrote to his bien-aimée) he wanted not “to deliver my feelings to the tender mercies of fools.”

Notes written by Elizabeth Lauer ©2005 

I N T E R M I S S I O N

 

String Quartet in C Sharp Minor, Op.131

by Ludwig van Beethoven

 

I. Adagio ma non troppo e molto espressivo

II. Allegro molto vivace

III. Allegro Moderato

IV. Andante, ma non troppo e molto cantabile

V. Presto

VI. Adagio quasi un poco andante

VII. Allegro

 

Beethoven was born December 16, 1770, in Bonn and died March 26, 1827, in Vienna. He began to work on Op. 131 late in 1825, after he had completed the three-quartet commission (Opp. 127, 130, 132) for Prince Galitzin, and presented it to the publisher on July 12 of the next year. Beethoven’s flippant note on the score— “Put together from pilferings from this and that” —caused the publisher great concern, and the composer had to assure the publisher that the music was completely original, and his remark was only a joke. In retrospect it now seems that his comment may have referred to the seven separate movements making up a unified work.

Lasting close to forty minutes, the quartet is divided into seven sections that are played without pause, creating a completely organic, well-integrated whole. The burden for projecting this underlying unity rests with the performers, who must maintain the proper relationships of tempo and mood for the work to flow smoothly from beginning to end.

 

The quartet was dedicated to Baron Joseph von Stutterheim, Field Marshal, in gratitude for accepting Beethoven’s nephew Karl into the baron’s regiment. Scholars believe that the first hearing was at a private concert in Vienna in December 1826, but that the initial public performance did not take place until 1835, long after Beethoven’s death. Beethoven once confided to friend Karl Holz that, while each of his sixteen quartets was unique, “each in its way,” his favorite was the C sharp minor, Op. 131. When Schubert heard the piece, Holz reported that “He fell into such a state of excitement and enthusiasm that we were all frightened for him.” Down to our own day many people, musicians as well as listeners, consider it the greatest quartet ever written.

Notes adapted from Melvin Berger's Guide to Chamber Music. 

 

Program may be subject to change.

 

BIOGRAPHIES

WILLY SUCRE, Viola, was born in La Paz, Bolivia, Willy Sucre studied at the Conservatorio Nacional de Música in La Paz, Colby College Chamber Music Institute in Waterville, Maine, Mannes School of Music in New York, and Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, Maryland. Sucre has been conductor and music director of the Albuquerque Philharmonic Orchestra, assistant conductor and principal violist of the Canada Symphony Orchestra in Montreal, assistant conductor and assistant principal violist of the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra, principal violist and guest conductor of the National Symphony of Bolivia, principal violist and guest conductor of the Albuquerque Chamber Orchestra, and principal violist and guest conductor of the Chamber Orchestra of La Paz. This past year Sucre performed with  the Albuquerque Chamber Orchestra as viola soloist.  In the summer of 2004 he performed as viola soloist in three concerts in Cochabamba and La Paz, Bolivia.

 

Currently, Sucre is a member of the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra and is the driving force behind the "Willy Sucre & Friends" concerts.

 

During the summer, Sucre travels throughout South America to pursue his major interests, which are to find new works of chamber music by modern composers and to encourage composers both here and in South America to write new pieces, especially piano quartets. He enjoys playing with other musicians and ensembles of diverse instrumentation. As a chamber musician, Sucre was the founder of the Cuarteto Boliviano and guest violist with various chamber music ensembles, and for ten years the violist of the Helios String Quartet. His experience includes extensive chamber music concerts, lectures and school demonstrations, CD recordings, and television performances throughout South, Central, and North America.

 

 

ROBERTA ARRUDA, Violin, was born in Joao Pessoa, Brazil and began playing the violin during a sojourn in the US when she was ten. She holds a Bachelor´s degree in music from Unicamp, Brazil, and recently completed a Master´s in Performance at the University of New Mexico (UNM). She spent two years at the Budapest Music Academy on a full-scholarship from Vitae Foundation from Sao Paulo, and later studied with Rudolf Koeckert from the Munich Hochschule für Musik und Kunst.

 

Arruda took part in the most relevant festivals in Brazil, and has played in master classes for musicians such as Leon Spierer, Guy Braunstein and Menahem Pressler. In the US she attended the Colorado College Music Festival, a full-scholarship program. She holds prizes from national competitions in Brazil and has appeared as a soloist not only in her home country with several orchestras, such as the Sergipe Symphony Orchestra and Experimental Repertoire Orchestra, but also abroad, in Romania and the US.

 

Arruda recorded the “Concertino for Violin and Orchestra” by Ernst Mahle with the Campinas Youth Orchestra in 2006.

 

In New Mexico, she has been a regular at Church of Beethoven performing chamber music and solos, and can be heard in many ensembles in the state, such as Santa Fe Pro Musica and Santa Fe Symphony. In 2008 she won an audition and held a one year position with the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra. She has soloed with the UNM Symphony Orchestra as a Concerto Competition winner and with the Albuquerque Philharmonic.

She is currently studying baroque violin interpretation, completing Suzuki and String Pedagogy training at UNM and teaching at the Lab School.

 

 

CAROL SWIFT MATTON, Violin, is a native of Toledo, Ohio. She has degrees in violin performance from the Eastman School of Music and Ohio University. Swift-Matton has been a member of the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra since 1989 and holds the position of Assistant Principal Second Violin. She is also a member of the Santa Fe Symphony, and often performs at the Church of Beethoven.

 

Previously she served as Principal Second Violin of the Chamber Orchestra of Albuquerque, and had the same title in the Chamber Orchestra of Oklahoma City. Past orchestral experience includes positions in the Oklahoma Symphony Orchestra, the Grand Rapids Symphony, and the Toledo Symphony. Also, she has played every summer since 1987 in the orchestra of the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, in Santa Cruz, CA.

Swift-Matton is married to NMSO Principal Bass Jean-Luc Matton and they are the proud parents of two teenaged daughters, Elise and Camille.

 

 

JOAN ZUCKER, Cello, New Mexico Symphony Orchestra’s (NMSO) Principal Cellist  was first heard by New Mexicans in the mid-seventies, as jazz cellist with the Johnny Gilbert Quartet and Principal Cellist of the Orchestra of Santa Fe. Since then she has performed in many of New Mexico's finest ensembles, from the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival and Opera, to Willy Sucre and Friends and the Santa Fe Desert Chorale. She has performed as concerto soloist and recitalist, and in numerous chamber groups, orchestras, and festivals in the United States and in Venezuela, her home for four years.

 

Zucker is a versatile musician who has taught extensively (cello, recorder, voice, orchestra, chamber music, theory, composition and improvisation), both privately and at various institutions including U.C. Santa Cruz, Ithaca College, and UNM. A native New Yorker, she holds music degrees from Bennington and Ithaca Colleges.

Zucker feels privileged to play on a Benjamin Banks cello made in Salisbury, England in 1788. She lives in Albuquerque with her teenage son, and spends as much time outdoors as possible. The month she spent trekking around the Annapurna Range in Nepal was one of the highlights of her life.

Read on for a more personal and detailed biography adapted from a NMSO Program Book that includes quotes by Zucker.

 

Zucker, grew up in New York City in a family of musically talented physicians and scientists for whom musical education was a priority. All four children were sent to the School of Musical Education where she studied everything from piano and recorder to music theory and choral singing in their eight year certificate program. She went to high school at the New Lincoln School – another place where music study was an important part of the curriculum – and there she wrote a piece for orchestra that was performed at her high school graduation.

 

She continued her cello, voice, and composition studies at Bennington College in Vermont. Her senior year voice teacher took her and 15 other students to Italy with him for a semester. They lived and studied in a castle in Tuscany. “The experience had a fantastic influence on me both personally and musically,” she said. Lacking a cello teacher, Zucker studied cello performance with the voice teacher, Frank Baker. “I learned about phrasing and the projection of musical ideas -- about how to breathe emotion and life into my playing. It was both inspiring and perplexing studying with a fabulous musician who knew nothing about cello technique.” 

 

A self-described product of the 60s, Zucker traveled to New Mexico with two friends after graduation in 1972, in search of new experiences and adventure.“We didn’t have the foggiest notion of what we were going to do,” she says. She ended up staying three years, playing with the Johnny Gilbert Jazz Quartet, the NMSO when it was the Albuquerque Symphony, the Orchestra of Santa Fe as principal cellist, and mounting folk art for Alexander Girard (where she hammered a finger and couldn’t play for six months).

 

She decided to return to school and earned a master’s degree in cello performance from Ithaca College in 1977. She then freelanced in New York City including regular performances with the Consort Piano Trio. From there she traveled to Caracas, Venezuela where petro dollars where flowing and five full time orchestras paying excellent salaries had attracted rosters of top quality international musicians. Zucker played in the Orquesta Filarmonica de Caracas in the first two years of its existence.

 

She then moved to Merida, Venezuela in the Andes, playing in the Orquesta Filarmonica de Merida, where she was principal cellist and soloist while performing extensively with a string quartet: the Cuarteto International de Cuerdas. Subsequently she taught in the opening year of the celebrated Orquesta Nacional Juvenil.

 

When the petro dollars stopped flowing, Zucker felt it was time to spend some of that hard earned cash and travel in Asia, sans cello. After four months of trekking in Nepal and Thailand and exploring India and China, she returned to Santa Fe to play principal cello in the Orchestra of Santa Fe, which later became the Santa Fe Symphony. She “paid her musical dues” piecing together a living gigging, teaching privately, teaching at United World College, playing in the Roswell, Santa Fe and NM symphonies as well as the Santa Fe Opera Orchestra, and working some as NM Artists in Residence.

 

Zucker enjoys her career. “There can be an incredible sense of communication between the performers and the audience that transcends words and goes directly heart to heart. I particularly love performing chamber music. The rehearsal process is fun: hashing musical ideas out together, trying things you wouldn’t have tried on your own. And then letting the spirit of the piece flow through you during a performance, enjoying spontaneously and wordlessly communicating with your colleagues and your audience so that each performance is unique, and the audience is part of the re-creation of that piece at that moment. It’s a marvelous experience. I consider myself extremely lucky to be able to make a living as a performing musician.”

 

Zucker tries to lead a well-rounded life, definitely not considering herself a “cello jock.” She likes devoting time and energy to parenting, hiking, gardening, skiing, crafts, and travel in addition to her musical pursuits. She lives in Albuquerque with her teenage son.