Program Book: Beethoven, Godfrey, Brahms

String Trio No. 3 in G major, Op. 9, No. 1

Ludwig Van Beethoven

Baptized: December 17, 1770 / Died: March 26, 1827

Beethoven dedicated his Op. 9 trios to Count Johann Georg Browne, an officer of Irish descent serving in the Russian army. Browne, whom Beethoven described as the “first Maecenas of [his] muse”—referring to the Greek patron of Homer and Virgil—was an important patron for Beethoven during his early years in Vienna.

This set of trios reflects Beethoven’s intentionality in regard to chamber music composition. Commentators have noted the indebtedness of the first movement to Haydn, suggesting that while not ready to try his hand at a Haydnesque symphony, Beethoven incorporated the slow introduction and surprise factor of Haydn’s thematic approach into the Adagio – Allegro con brio. The slow introduction opens with all three instruments throwing back the curtain to release sprightly staccato passages. There is an underlying sense of harmonic and thematic tentativeness that seems intended to pepper the opening of the trio with an element of the unexpected. Beethoven connects the movement and outlines the sonata form with the motive that opens the Allegro, bringing it back both as the opening of the development and then again at the closing section.

Beethoven’s surprises are still more, with an Adagio in E major. Here the composer exploits slow triplets in their capacity to both flow and offer insistent repetition. As is often the case with his slow movements, Beethoven qualifies the tempo marking, here with “ma non tanto, e cantabile,” expressly to avoid a plodding quality to the triplets. The three instruments pass around the variety of triplets, exchanging accompaniment and leading roles.

While Beethoven’s first movement may hint at Haydn’s symphonic conceits, the third movement Scherzo seems to take a page from Haydn’s Op. 33, No. 3 quartet. The scherzo theme features fun trill figures that recall the “bird” trills in the Haydn quartet. The first trio incorporates two Grand Pauses, which, while not the most grandiose of surprises, still offer a slightly unexpected gesture. The moto perpetuo accompaniment of the second trio hints at what is to come in the finale.

The Presto revisits the staccato articulation of the opening movement (this time beginning in arpeggiated figures in the violin) and offers a frenetic display that leaves behind the more folksy character of the third movement. Here again one can recall Haydn’s energetic finale for Op. 33, No. 3, although Beethoven does not use a rondo, but instead employs a sonata form. Beethoven’s aptitude in writing for three instruments is on full display, as he coaxes out a multitude of characters and colors while barely stopping for breath.

Ad Concordiam: Quintet Variations for Oboe, String Trio and Piano (2018)

Daniel Strong Godfrey

Born: 1949

Daniel Strong Godfrey is currently Professor and Chair of the Department of Music at Northeastern University’s College of Arts, Media and Design. He is founder and co-director of the Seal Bay Festival of American Chamber Music (Maine) and is co-author of Music Since 1945, published by Schirmer Books. Numerous awards and commissions include those from the J.S. Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Fromm Foundation, the Koussevitsky Music Foundation at the Library of Congress, and many others. Koch International Classics’ release of Godfrey’s String Quartet was named one of 2004’s best classical CDs by The New Yorker and The Rest is Noise. The principal players of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra recorded seven of Godfrey’s chamber works in 2007 (Koch). Godfrey’s music has been performed by numerous orchestras and ensembles, including the Buffalo Philharmonic, Louisville Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Collage New Music, VocalEssence, Da Capo Chamber Players, and numerous string quartets including the Cassatt, Cuarteto Latinoamericano, Lark, and Portland.

Ad Concordiam was commissioned by the Boston Chamber Music Society for its 35th anniversary and premiered on April 8, 2018 at Sanders Theatre. In his notes, Godfrey remarks upon the multiple meanings behind the title:

Ad Concordiam has overlapping meanings, as does its translation from the Latin: toward (in search of, in tribute to, aspiring to) harmony (or agreement, or unity, or…Concord). Having recently moved just next door to Concord, Massachusetts, and having frequented it often since attending high school nearby, I have always found it to be a central locus of my values and my sense of place. When it comes to values, Concord represents historically the ideals that motivated the formation of our union and that established, through the transcendentalists, a new standard for intellectual and moral integrity.

Even so, Godfrey emphasized that it was the values that Concord represented to him, more than the place itself, which seemed to capture his thoughts while composing the piece. The work’s subtitle is “Quintet Variations” and this aptly describes the four movements that are played without pause, as the material introduced at the beginning in the oboe, heard over tremolando strings, appears in various guises throughout the work. The music becomes increasingly motivic, and while the melody freely changes direction, there is an overall sense of build. The motivic responsibility transfers eventually to the violin, leading to a more energetic descending pizzicato line in the viola built upon these same motives, with the piano prancing alongside.

The violin’s melody eventually grows into a modal entreaty, only to somersault attacca into the second Lietamente (“happily”) movement in 2/4. A syncopated melody in the oboe against the strings lends a playful whimsy, accentuated by the sparkling ascending scales. Godfrey distributes the lines across the instruments to vary both texture and expression. Energy and passion build, with moving passages in the middle voices, then come to rest in order to create space for an espressivo melody in the oboe, constructed with the same intervallic content as the opening motives. A wave once again builds then crests to introduce a new idea. The oboe offers a soulful and disjunct ballad and eventually there is a shimmering transition to playful syncopated dancing hemiola rhythms. The two ideas are cast together, ultimately reaching a sforzando dissonant chord in the piano. An arpeggiated flourish in the piano acts as a springboard for the oboe that muses briefly against open strings, before stretching into a soulful solo. The violin recalls the opening motivic material against sustained chords in the piano, and the keyboard, viola, and cello quietly move the piece into the ensuing movement.

The Scorrevole (“sliding,” “flowing”) movement opens with muted strings that murmur underneath a soaring melody in the violin, dissolving eventually into the murmuring gesture in the viola. The murmur is then transferred to the piano underneath a duet between violin and oboe. The texture grows more complex, as broken groupings in the cello and violin come to rest momentarily on a fermata. The viola recalls the pensive nature that the oboe introduced, this time in dialogue with the piano.

The strings gather forces to sweep powerfully into the Veloce movement. The oboe features an angular melody, punctuated by the piano and strings, that grows increasingly adamant, finally giving over to pizzicato and agitated strings in a quasi-fugue. Ultimately the piano reveals a clear statement of the theme, and what ensues is a revisiting of all the different characters from cantabile balladry to jaunty syncopation. The oboe reaches into its heights, vying for space in the chaotic texture until a trill in the cello signals a return to the original tempo. The ensemble seems to rally its forces through a whirlwind of syncopated energy that, like a cyclone, wraps everyone into the tempest until a final frenzied rush ends the maelstrom.

Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor, Op. 25 (1861)

Johannes Brahms

Born: May 7, 1833 / Died: April 3, 1897

…variation of the features of a basic unit produces all the thematic formulations which provide for fluency, contrasts, variety, logic and unity on the one hand, and character, mood, expression, and every needed differentiation, on the other hand—thus elaborating the idea of the piece.

So wrote composer Arnold Schoenberg in a 1950 essay on Bach, wherein he gave one (of many) definitions for the concept of developing variation. Schoenberg saw Johannes Brahms as a practitioner of this technique, avoiding exact repetition, but instead fostering thematic fecundity in profoundly exciting ways. In 1937, Schoenberg orchestrated this quartet to address what he felt was sometimes an overwhelming of the strings on the part of the piano.

At the time of its composition, despite the fact that violinist Joseph Joachim allegedly critiqued the first movement of this quartet as “not as original” as he expected, even he could not ignore Brahms’s gifts for thematic development. Indeed, the opening Allegro in G minor employs a motive in ways that seem to foreshadow Shostakovich’s famous D-S-C-H motive almost a century later. The piano starts in a tuneful descent, which is then echoed sequentially by the strings. A new motive is forcefully declaimed in unison and then moves from an emphatic declaration to a more pensive guise that ultimately transitions to the dominant key area. Both the exposition and development are expansive, using the motivic material as thematic weft to the sonata form’s warp. Alongside Brahms’s thematic ingenuity is textural, articulative, and harmonic variety, providing a tapestry of interest that actually illuminates the main motive when it enters. Even the recapitulation provides contrast, as the motive is passed through the strings against a lighter articulation of sixteenth notes in the piano’s right hand. A measure and a half of pizzicato from the strings signals a final yearning stretching of the motive that settles the movement quietly into a final G minor chord.

Both Joachim and Clara Schumann praised the Intermezzo, the former noting that it was “so full of surprising turns.” An alternative to scherzo and trio, the movement opens with a pedal motor established by the cello while the muted expressive melody sounds in the viola and violin. The gaiety is more obvious when the piano enters with the dotted theme against pizzicato in the violin and viola. Harmonic curve balls make it difficult to pinpoint the emotional intent of the dotted theme, further complicated by hemiola rhythms in the piano. A dialogue ensues as the piano and the strings pass the motives back and forth. The Trio features triplets that almost overtake the texture. There is a constant sense of moto perpetuo, but Brahms shifts the character and expressive content. A ritardando leads into a return of the intermezzo’s Allegro in C minor and finally gentle arpeggiated figures in the piano offer up a brief coda to end the movement in C major.

The triple meter Andante opens with a theme that is broadly anthem-or-hymnlike, although injected with Romantic pathos. Rhythmic octaves layered with dissonances in the piano undergird a brief but sinuous motive in the strings before the entire quartet takes up the penetrating rhythm. There is a marvelous textural tension between the adamant rhythmic motive and the attempt at a more lyrical theme, but the attempts are cut short by an almost sudden animato section, which is far more whimsical by comparison. The dotted theme comes crashing in boisterously and resounding homophonic strings joyfully sing the theme, until once again displaced, this time by an uneasy and modulating duet between the viola and cello. The melody seems to become increasingly present, finally sounding lyrically over triplets in the piano, but still understated. The piano rounds out the movement by sounding the anthem-like tune in a coda that gently pulls the movement toward its E-flat major close.

The Rondo alla zingarese reflects an early instance of the Hungarian (and more accurately, Romani) style with which Brahms would become closely associated. With episodes that recall the cimbalom and fiddle playing of Romani people, the G minor movement displays a diverse palette of styles. Pizzicato strings against turning figures in the piano offer virtuosity at top speed. Homophonic broad chords slow the momentum a bit for a more blended thematic episode that briefly gives way to a folk ballad-like theme in the strings. As would come to be the case in later Brahms, the form (here, a rondo), offers guideposts, but Brahms feels no pressure to illuminate the structure. Instead, surprising key changes and virtuosic flourishes expand the episodes to provide almost mini-developments between statements of the rondo theme. A brief imitative interlude in the strings ultimately transitions to a return of rapid turning figures in the piano and a final iteration of the rondo theme in a triumphant frenzy.

© 2023 Rebecca G. Marchand

Marcus Thompson, violist, has performed in chamber music series and recitals throughout the world. As a chamber musician, he has been a frequent guest of festivals and series in Amsterdam, Dubrovnik, Edmonton, Montreal, Santa Fe, Seattle, Sitka, Spoleto, Okinawa, and Rio de Janeiro. He appeared with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center at Alice Tully Hall, on tour, and in a Live from Lincoln Center broadcast, and as a guest of the Cleveland, Emerson, Jupiter, Miami, Orion, Shanghai, and Vermeer String Quartets. Mr. Thompson has been a member musician of the Boston Chamber Music Society since 1984. In 2009 he was appointed its second artistic director. As a recitalist, he has performed in series throughout the Americas, including Carnegie Recital Hall and The Metropolitan Museum in New York, The National Gallery and Terrace Theater at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., Herbst Theater in San Francisco, Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis, Jordan Hall and Gardner Museum in Boston, and Teatro Nacional in the Dominican Republic. Mr. Thompson has appeared as viola and viola d’amore soloist with many of this country’s leading symphony orchestras, including the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Boston Pops, The Chicago Symphony Orchestra, The Cleveland Orchestra, The Philadelphia Orchestra, St. Louis Symphony, the National Symphony Orchestra, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and the Chicago Sinfonietta. Mr. Thompson recorded the Bartók Concerto with the Slovenian Radio Orchestra, and works of Serly, Jongen, and Françaix with the Czech National Symphony. In 2012 Mr. Thompson appeared as soloist with the Rochester Philharmonic premiering Olly Wilson’s Viola Concerto which was commissioned for him in 1992. In 2018 he performed as soloist in works by Vivaldi, Morton Feldman, Elena Ruehr and Vaughan Williams at MIT in observance of the fiftieth anniversary of his Boston recital debut. In 2019 Mr. Thompson performed the John Harbison Viola Concerto with BMOP under Gil Rose and a Vivaldi Viola d’Amore Concerto at the Aston Magna Festival in Great Barrington, MA, and gave the Boston premiere of Harbison’s Sonata for Viola and Piano on the BCMS Series. Born and raised in the South Bronx, Mr. Thompson holds a doctorate in viola performance from The Juilliard School. He has been a member of the viola faculty at New England Conservatory for more than three decades, and professor of music at MIT for more than four decades. In June 2015 he was appointed to MIT’s highest faculty honor, becoming one of its thirteen Institute Professors.

Isabelle Ai Durrenberger, violinist, delivers striking performances of communicative strength and sincere artistry. Currently based in New York City, Isabelle was chosen as a 2023–25 fellow of Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect program. Her 2023-24 season features multiple return invitations, including performances with Jupiter Chamber Players (NYC), Orpheus Chamber Orchestra in Carnegie Hall, and the Grammy-nominated conductorless chamber orchestra, A Far Cry. Isabelle spent the summer of 2023 making chamber music at the Marlboro Music Festival, Lake Champlain, and Four Seasons Spring Workshop. She also enjoys exploring music through teaching: she has a private violin studio and serves on the violin faculty at the New England Conservatory Preparatory School where she teaches violin lessons and coaches chamber music. Isabelle completed her B.M. at the Cleveland Institute of Music where she was mentored by Jaime Laredo for seven years; and her graduate studies at the New England Conservatory with Soovin Kim and Don Weilerstein. Her other mentors and influences include Jennifer Koh, Sharon Robinson, Joan Kwuon, Jinjoo Cho, Jan Mark Sloman, and Jun Kim. Isabelle has received many recognitions and awards for her musicianship, including the 2021–22 Borromeo String Quartet Guest Award; First Prize and Performance Prize from the Tuesday Musical Competition in 2019; the Milton Preves Memorial Third Prize at the 2018 Irving M. Klein International String Competition; and the First Prize in the 2017 Cleveland Institute of Music Concerto Competition. In 2020, she was highlighted as the Featured Young Artist of the Music from the Western Reserve concert series. Isabelle performs on a 2020 Zygmuntowicz violin generously loaned to her by a private patron in New York City.

Max Levinson, pianist, has performed as soloist with the St. Louis, Detroit, San Francisco, Baltimore, Oregon, Indianapolis, Colorado, New World, San Antonio, Louisville, and Utah Symphonies, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Boston Pops, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, and in recital at New York’s Alice Tully Hall, Washington D.C.’s Kennedy Center, London’s Wigmore Hall, Zürich’s Tonhalle, the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, Jordan Hall in Boston, and throughout the US, Canada, and Europe. Mr. Levinson’s international career was launched when he won first prize at the 1997 Dublin International Piano Competition. He is also recipient of the Avery Fisher Career Grant and the Andrew Wolf Award. Artistic director of the San Juan Chamber Music Festival in Ouray, Colorado and former co-artistic director of the Janus 21 Concert Series in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Mr. Levinson is an active chamber musician. He has performed with the Tokyo, Vermeer, Mendelssohn, and Borromeo Quartets, and appears at major music festivals including Santa Fe, Marlboro, Mostly Mozart, Bravo/Vail, La Jolla, Seattle and Cartagena. His recordings have earned wide acclaim, including his most recent recording with violinist Stefan Jackiw of the three Brahms sonatas (Sony). Mr. Levinson is chair of the piano department at the Boston Conservatory and also a faculty member at the New England Conservatory. Born in the Netherlands and raised in Los Angeles, Mr. Levinson began studying piano at age five. As a child he also studied cello, composition and conducting. He attended Harvard University, graduating cum laude with a degree in English Literature, and later completed his graduate studies with Patricia Zander at the New England Conservatory of Music, receiving an Artist Diploma and the Gunther Schuller Medal, an award given to the school’s top graduate student. He has been a BCMS member musician since 2016.

Peggy Pearson, oboist, is a winner of the Pope Foundation Award for Outstanding Accomplishment in Music. She gave her New York debut with soprano Dawn Upshaw in 1995, a program featuring the premiere of John Harbison’s Chorale Cantata which was written specifically for them. She has performed solo, chamber and orchestral music throughout the U.S. and abroad. A member of the Bach Aria Group, Ms. Pearson is also solo oboist with the Emmanuel Chamber Orchestra, an organization that has performed the complete cycle of sacred cantatas by J.S. Bach. She is featured on the recording of Bach cantatas by Emmanuel Music with Lorraine Hunt Lieberson. Ms. Pearson is the director emerita of, and oboist with the Winsor Music Chamber Series. She is also a founding member of La Fenice. Ms. Pearson has toured internationally and recorded extensively with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and has appeared with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra as principal oboist, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and Musicians from Marlboro. She was principal oboist of the Boston Philharmonic from 2010 to 2015. Ms. Pearson has been an active exponent of contemporary music. She was a fellow of the Radcliffe Institute in contemporary music, and has premiered numerous works, many of which were written specifically for her. She is featured on a recording of John Harbison’s music entitled First Light, with Dawn Upshaw and Lorraine Hunt Lieberson. As director of Winsor Music, Inc., Ms. Pearson organized the Winsor Music Consortium, a project to commission works for oboe, and has commissioned and premiered 30 works on her chamber music series. She was a founding member of the Emmanuel Wind Quintet, winner of the 1981 Naumburg Award, which collaborated with the Guild of Composers. Ms. Pearson has been on the faculties at Boston Conservatory, MIT (Emerson Scholars Program), Songfest, The Tanglewood Music Center (Bach Institute), the Conservatory of Music (University of Cincinnati), Wellesley College, the Composers Conference at Wellesley College and the Longy School of Music. She has been a BCMS member musician since 2016.

Raman Ramakrishnan, cellist, was a founding member of the Daedalus Quartet, winners of the grand prize at the 2001 Banff International String Quartet Competition. During his eleven years with the quartet, he performed coast-to-coast in the United States and Canada, in Japan, Hong Kong and Panama, and across Europe. The quartet has been in residence at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the University of Pennsylvania, and Columbia University, where Mr. Ramakrishnan maintains a teaching studio. In 2011, he formed the Horszowski Trio with violinist Jesse Mills and pianist Rieko Aizawa. He has given solo recitals in New York, Boston, Seattle and Washington, D.C., and has performed chamber music at Bargemusic and at the Aspen, Caramoor, Charlottesville, Four Seasons, Lincolnshire (UK), Marlboro, Mehli Mehta (India), Oklahoma Mozart and Vail Music Festivals. He has toured with Musicians from Marlboro and has performed, as guest principal cellist, with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. As a guest member of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble, he has performed in New Delhi and Agra, India and in Cairo, Egypt. He was born in Athens, Ohio and grew up in East Patchogue, New York. His father is a molecular biologist and his mother is the children’s book author and illustrator Vera Rosenberry. He holds a bachelor’s degree in physics from Harvard University and a master’s degree in music from The Juilliard School. His principal teachers have been Fred Sherry, Andrés Díaz and André Emelianoff. Mr. Ramakrishnan lives in New York City with his wife, violist Melissa Reardon. He plays a Neapolitan cello made by Vincenzo Jorio in 1837. He has been a BCMS member musician since 2013.

Alyssa Wang is a passionate and versatile violinist, conductor, and composer. As a violinist, Alyssa has soloed with ensembles across the country and been featured in numerous contemporary recording projects, such as Carlos Simon’s Grammy-nominated album, Requiem for the Enslaved (Decca), Nancy Galbraith’s Violin Concerto with Boston Modern Orchestra Project, and David Post’s Violin Sonata (Centaur). She is the co-founder, artistic director, and principal conductor of the Boston Festival Orchestra, which presents an annual summer festival, chamber music series, and opera project. In 2021, she joined the Boston Ballet as assistant conductor, conducting full ballet productions throughout the year and serving as music director for the annual Next Generation project with Boston Ballet School. As a composer, she premiered her own violin concerto, Swept Away, with the Chamber Orchestra of Pittsburgh, who commissioned the work, in February 2023. Alyssa earned her bachelor’s degree from Carnegie Mellon University under the tutelage of Andrés Cárdenes, and completed two master’s degrees in violin performance and conducting at the New England Conservatory where she studied with Malcolm Lowe. Alyssa is the winner of the Carnegie Mellon School of Music Concerto Competition and the Silbermann Chamber Music Competition, and a recipient of the 2023 Solti Foundation Career Assistance Award, the 2022 St. Botolph Emerging Artist Award, the Carnegie Mellon Women’s Award, among others. She is also an Andrew Carnegie Scholar. The 2023–24 season is Alyssa’s first season as a BCMS member musician.