Jasper & Jupiter Quartets – April 21, 2022

Program Notes

Florence Price: String Quartet No. 1 in G Major (1929) Jasper Quartet
Florence Price was a prolific American composer, best known for her vocal and piano works, but whose compositional output spans the repertoire from solo to orchestral literature. Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, Price’s musical talent was recognized from a young age, and she attended the prestigious New England Conservatory at 14. She eventually settled in Chicago, where she developed serious collaborations with other Black musicians and artists, including, notably, famed vocalist Marian Anderson. Price is recognized as the first Black woman composer to have a work performed by a major American orchestra, when she won a prize for her Symphony in E Minor and was awarded a performance by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1932.

Though Price gained some national recognition in her lifetime, she faced significant barriers due to her race and gender. For several decades after her death, her music did not receive the attention it deserved for such a gifted composer. In 2009, a collection of her unpublished – and nearly lost – works was found in a house in St. Anne, Illinois, a home that Price had inhabited for several summers in the early 20^th century but that been abandoned for many years. This discovery led to a renewed interest in the performance of and scholarship around Price’s work, and in the past decade has her music begun to be more widely performed around the US and beyond, finally beginning to receive the recognition it so clearly deserves.

Price’s String Quartet in G Major balances a Romantic sensibility with elements inspired by folk music, spirituals, and the blues. The first movement is reminiscent of late Romantic string quartets by composers like Grieg and Borodin. The first theme is sweeping and hopeful, followed by a magical transition to the waltzing second theme first presented in the viola. The second movement takes a more songlike approach, presenting a lushly harmonized folk-inspired melody that begins and ends the movement. The two iterations of this beautiful melody are divided by a contrasting section with a lively lightness reminiscent of ballet music. -Emlyn Johnson

Michi Wiancko: To Unpathed Waters, Undreamed Shores (2020) Jupiter Quartet
Movement 1: Pelagic Within – Our journey begins on the water, as we travel from shoreline to open sea.
Movement 2: Dream of the Xerces Blue – Dedicated to the magic of pollinators specifically to the gossamer-winged butterfly, Xerces Blue, which became extinct after loss of its coastal sand dune habitat in San Francisco’s Sunset District. It was last spotted in the Bay area in 1943.
Movement 3: Central Park Microbial – A tribute to the microbiome of the soil beneath New York City’s Central Park, discovered only in recent years to be shockingly diverse and resilient. The vast majority of the park’s microbes have yet to be studied or even named.
Movement 4: Invisible Eviction – The world is on fire.
Movement 5: Crying, Together – A song of mourning dedicated to our most vulnerable populations.
Movement 6: Follow the Water – A return to the ocean, and the rivers that flow into it.
Movement 7: Rise Up – A celebration, a call to action, and a meditation on our collective humanity.

Dan Visconti: Eternal Breath (2011) Jupiter and Jasper Quartets
Dan Visconti’s hauntingly beautiful Eternal Breath was commissioned by Bill and Margie Freivogel (parents of J, Meg, Liz, and older brother Ben) on the occasion of their 40th wedding anniversary, in 2011. The Freivogels envisioned a work that would involve their four children (who all grew up playing string quartets together), but also wanted to include their children’s spouses, three of whom are professional musicians (Rachel, Daniel, and violinist Cynthia Miller Freivogel). As a result, the unique instrumentation is for three cellos, three violins, one viola, and a drone reed instrument (a shruti box was used in both the recording and the premiere). The drone was an accommodation for Gabe Nardie, Liz’s husband and the only spouse who is not a professional musician. Visconti later adapted the score to provide a second viola part in place of the third cello role. He describes the work’s concept: “Eternal Breath is based on a simple ‘breathing’ phrase, which becomes longer and more elaborate as the expanding melody is passed around the entire ensemble. The idea of the breath of life passed from one generation to the next, as well as the expansion of the family through marriage inspired the development of the initial, chant-like material. Accompanied by a drone which marks the rise and fall of each musical ‘breath,’ the melody moves through a reverberant and glowing atmosphere until everyone joins in playing the same overlapping phrase, inflected with their own individuality.” The 2011 premiere of this work was on the Freivogels’ back patio, amid the insect sounds of an August summer night and with the family’s small grandchildren running around among the guests. While the recording captures the details of the music more clearly than the initial performance, it is helpful to keep in mind the original, slightly messy atmosphere of familial love, warmth, and chaos. -Liz Freivogel

Felix Mendelssohn: Octet in Eb Major, Op. 20 (1825) Jasper and Jupiter Quartets
Mendelssohn wrote his Octet in E-flat major in 1825 at all of sixteen years old. Written as a gift to Mendelssohn’s teacher, it is thought to have been first performed at a Sunday afternoon concert at the Mendelssohn home in Berlin later that year. Though string quartets had been popular for several decades, Mendelssohn’s octet was one of the first of its kind, and many listeners feel that Mendelssohn’s prodigious achievement has not been surpassed in the nearly 200 years since it was written.

The assured character of Mendelssohn’s writing throughout the Octet is evident from the start of the first movement. Its first theme opens with an expansive violin arpeggio figure that leaps up, first two octaves and a sixth, and then a full three octaves – all, of course, effortlessly and with total confidence. A more compact second theme offers a nice contrast, but the overriding demeanor of the music is one of irresistible youthful energy.

The whole piece is not entirely carefree, though, as the introspective second movement demonstrates. Perhaps the most striking feature of this slow movement is the conflict between duple and triple rhythms that occur at its heart; this is a device Mendelssohn would return to regularly in his subsequent chamber music, especially, to evoke some sort of emotional struggle.

The third movement scherzo is often regarded as the Octet’s most brilliant: Mendelssohn never topped his “elfin” style as it appears here and in another of his most famous works, Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream. According to the composer’s sister Fanny Mendelssohn, the scherzo makes “One feel so near the world of spirits, carried away in the air, half inclined to snatch up a broomstick and follow the aerial procession.” The finale picks up right where the scherzo leaves off, beginning with intimations of a brilliant eight-part fugue before turning into five minutes of staggeringly athletic and sunny counterpoint.

Fairly or not, but certainly not surprisingly, Mendelssohn’s later music sometimes suffered from comparisons to both the Octet and the Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream (penned the following year, when he was seventeen). Even so, Mendelssohn himself did not seem to mind. Near the end of his life he declared the Octet to be “my favorite of all my compositions” and expressed what a joy it had been to write it – a sentiment that has been matched by the joy that audiences have experienced in engaging with this wonderful work for the past two centuries! -Jonathan Blumhofer, adapted by Emlyn Johnson