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Join Us For Our 2025-2026 Season! |
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Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players “This was music-making of a very high order” Fred Kirshnit, The New York Sun |
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View Our Printable Calendar and Ticket Order Form (pdf) Take a look at our guest artists for this season. |
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Join us for our next concerts...
Monday, October 13 ♦ 2 PM & 7:30 PM Tickets: $25, $17 ~ Reservations advised Chelsea Wang piano Hina Khuong-Huu violin Julia Schilz violin Maurycy Banaszek viola Roni Gal-Ed oboe Vadim Lando clarinet Karl Kramer horn Gina Cuffari bassoon BEETHOVEN Piano Quartet in C Major WoO 36 No. 3 Beethoven was a piano prodigy and performed in public at age 7. When he was 10 years old, he became the assistant to the new court organist in Bonn, Christian Gottlob Neefe, who introduced him to the art of the fugue and the study of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier. In 1783, Beethoven was described in Magazin der Musik as “a boy of eleven years and a most promising talent. He plays the piano very skillfully and with power, reads at sight very well…. [Neefe] is now training him in composition…. This youthful genius…would surely become a second Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart if he were to continue as he has begun.” The quartets were modeled after a set of Mozart violin sonatas published in 1781, while revealing his distinct musical style that anticipates his later work. He later used some of the themes in his Piano Sonata No. 1 in F minor, which he wrote about 10 years later in 1795. It is also one of the earliest works for the innovative instrumental combination of piano, violin, viola and cello. The set of Quartets was published in 1828, the year after his death, when the Viennese publisher Artaria acquired the manuscripts. Anton REICHA Octet in Eb Major Op. 96 Alan Becker of the South Florida Classical Review observed that Reicha’s Octet “adheres mostly to the doctrines of Viennese classicism.... The melodic fecundity and folk-like themes he used with great skill give this music a lift and buoyancy that are hard to resist. Themes are tossed from one instrument to another, virtuosity is required for each player, and the rich palette of instrumental colors is fully exploited with nary a touch of Beethoven’s influence to be found.” The 8 instruments comprise 2 violins, viola, cello, flute, clarinet, horn, and bassoon. Reicha—a man of breadth and depth—was born in Prague in 1770, and later became a naturalized French composer. His father, a town piper, died when he was 10 months old, leaving him in the custody of a mother who had no interest in educating him. Young Anton ran away from home when only ten years old, and was subsequently adopted and educated in music by his uncle Josef Reicha. In 1785 they moved to Bonn, where he played the flute and violin in the court orchestra alongside young Beethoven on viola. He studied composition secretly, against his uncle’s wishes, and entered the University of Bonn in 1789 and met Haydn in the early 1790s. When Bonn was captured by the French in 1794 Reicha fled to Hamburg, where he made a living teaching the piano, harmony, and composition. He also composed and studied mathematics and philosophy. Hoping to gain recognition as an opera composer, he went Paris in 1799, but did not succeed. In 1801 he moved on to Vienna, where he visited Haydn, renewed his friendship with Beethoven, studied with Salieri and Albrechtsberger, and produced his first important works, while reading mathematics and philosophy, and reflecting seriously upon pedagogy. He was an accomplished theorist, and wrote several treatises on various aspects of composition. His treatises are known to have influenced Giacomo Meyerbeer, Schumann, and Smetana. (Schumann once noted, “his often peculiar ideas about fugue should not be ignored.”) His life was once again affected by war in 1808, prompting him to leave Vienna, which was occupied by the French under Napoleon, for Paris, where he spent the rest of his life teaching composition and, in 1818, was appointed professor of counterpoint and fugue at the Conservatoire. His pupils included Franck, Liszt, Berlioz, Gounod, and a number of lesser-known composers whose works have been performed by Jupiter. He died in 1836. César FRANCK Trio concertant in F# minor Op. 1 No. 1 Franck’s Op. 1 comprised a set of 3 trios composed over 3 years while a student at the Paris Conservatoire, and published in the spring of 1843. The trios were well received by his contemporaries. Mendelssohn praised them; Liszt offered constructive criticism and encouragement, and introduced them on the concert stages of Germany. Among other prominent admirers were Daniel Auber, Chopin, Gaetano Donizetti, Fromental Halévy, Giacomo Meyerbeer, and Ambroise Thomas. The first Trio was recorded by the great pianist Sviatoslav Richter, violinist Oleg Kagan, and cellist Natalia Gutman in 1983. Franck (1822–1890) was born in Liège, but did not become a naturalized French citizen until 1873. His family moved to Paris in 1835, and at age 15 he was sent to the Paris Conservatoire. After a promising start upon his graduation, he sank into obscurity. However, when he switched from piano to organ at age 30, he became the greatest improviser of his time; and after the 1880s he composed most of the music by which he is known. In the view of the esteemed critic Harold Schonberg, “Franck was the dominating musical force of the period in France, both as a composer and as teacher, and he gathered unto himself a group of pupils who did everything but put a halo over him and worship. There was something in the man that encouraged worship. …he was kind to the point of saintliness, serene, otherworldly. Never did a harsh word pass his lips, never a derogatory remark. He was not interested in honors or in money, and a stain-glass aura (reflected in his music) emanated from him. One of his greatest delights was to sit and improvise at the organ of Ste.-Clothilde in a religious ecstasy…. People compared him with Fra Angelico. It was to Franck that the younger generation turned.” His two most famous pupils were Chausson and Vincent d’Indy, who remarked, “Everything in Franck sings, and sings all the time.” |
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Monday, October 27 ♦ 2 PM & 7:30 PM Tickets: $25, $17 ~ Reservations advised Roman Rabinovich piano Julian Rhee violin Emad Zolfaghari viola Gaeun Kim cello Nina Bernat double bass Sooyun Kim flute Vadim Lando clarinet Max REGER Serenade in D Major Op. 77a At the beginning of June 1904 Reger wrote, “It is absolutely clear to me that what our present age lacks is a Mozart,” and announced that the “first fruit of that realization” would be a Flute Serenade (Op. 77a). For Reger, Mozart was a completely Rococo musician and the epitome of compositional fluency and musicianly enthusiasm, and would be the antidote to the modernism of Reger’s time. While rooted in Romantic traditions, the Serenade flirts with its artful harmonic language. In his life of only 43 years, Reger achieved prominence as a pianist, organist, conductor, teacher, and composer noted for his organ works. Born in Bavaria in 1873, his father made sure that Max learned to play the piano and string instruments. Together, they also rebuilt a scrapped school organ for use at home, and this was the instrument on which Reger first explored harmonic effects. He studied with Adalbert Lindner, the town organist of Weiden; and from 1890 to 1893, with Hugo Riemann in Sondershausen and Wiesbaden. About this time he became friends with Busoni, Eugen d’Albert, and Karl Straube, who was a devoted interpreter of his organ music. By 1901, despite strong opposition to his traditional methods from the Neudeutsche Schule, he established himself in Munich as a composer and pianist. Before long, he got tired of the bickering in Munich and accepted, in 1907, a post as professor of composition and director of music at Leipzig University, which brought him international renown. In 1911, Duke George II of Saxe-Meiningen appointed him conductor of the court orchestra at Meiningen. After returning from a tour in the Netherlands, he died from a heart attack at the hotel Hentschef in Leipzig in 1916. Reger’s prodigious output from his complex creative mind, produced in 26 years, is unparalleled among leading contemporaries. At once Baroque and Romantic, he was influenced by Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms most strongly; and Chopin, Mendelssohn, Liszt, and Wagner impressed him as well. In turn, his music influenced Alban Berg, Paul Hindemith, Arthur Honegger, Franz Schmidt, and Arnold Schoenberg. Hans PFITZNER Sextet in G minor Op. 55 Music writer Scott Morrison views the Sextet by the avowed Romantic as “a little masterpiece, a jolly divertimento.... The first movement is a sonata-allegro with especially winsome themes.... The Quasi-Minuetto is almost a classical-era miniature.... The Rondoletto is an outdoor-piece that could almost have been written by Schubert except for its startlingly effective modulations and its creative changes of instrumental combinations. The fourth movement, Semplice misterioso, is in strophic songform, with varying intermezzi between stanzas. It leads without pause into the finale, Comodo, which alone among all the movements features a number of double bass solos...and it builds to a joyful conclusion.” Pfitzner, a man with a quick, penetrating mind and quizzical humor, was born in 1869 into a family of musicians in Moscow. When he was two, the family returned to his father’s hometown of Frankfurt. From 1886 to 1890 he studied at the Hoch Conservatory, where his piano teacher was James Kwast. He later married Mimi (Kwast’s daughter and a granddaughter of Ferdinand Hiller) against her parents’ wishes and after she had rejected the advances of Percy Grainger. He worked at some low-paying jobs before his appointment as opera director and head of the conservatory in Strasbourg in 1908. His most important work, the musical legend Palestrina, was completed in 1915. In 1925 he was made a knight of the Pour le Mérite and a senator of the German Academy in Munich, but his activities diminished after his wife died in 1926. “In 1934 Pfitzner, in poor health though still mentally active, was relieved of his ‘life’ post in Munich; he spent the years of Nazi rule, which he detested, as a conductor and accompanist. Though his sight grew weaker he continued to compose. When his home was destroyed in an air raid, he moved to...Vienna, then to Garmisch-Partenkirchen and finally, in 1946, to an old people’s home in...Munich. All of his possessions had been lost: Reger’s widow gave him a piano. He was buried with honor in the Vienna Zentralfriedhof [New Grove Dictionary].” His work was championed by Bruno Walter. Richard STRAUSS Piano Quartet in C minor Op. 13 Strauss began composing the Piano Quartet in the spring of 1884 and completed it later that year. It reveals the fusion of the gravity and grandeur of Brahms with the fire and impetuous virtuosity of Strauss at age 20. At its premiere in Weimar on 8 December 1885, Strauss was the pianist. The next year, it won first prize (among 24 entrants) in a piano quartet competition sponsored by the Tonkünstlerverein of Berlin. Almost 2 decades after its creation, following a performance with the Mannes Quartet in Mendelssohn Hall, a review in the New York Times appeared on 19 March 1904: “It is admirably written for the four instruments, which are treated with great independence…. The work is not without some foreshadowings of what was to come later; there are strains of ‘Till Eulenspiegel’ in the vivacious and tricky Scherzo, which is full of delightful touches and complex rhythms. The andante has a marked kinship with some of Dr. Strauss’s sustained and deeply felt songs, such as ‘Allerseeien.’ It is a work of uncommon interest and value…. Dr. Strauss showed himself to be an extremely skillful and resourceful pianist in his playing...not as a virtuoso and not through seeking the effects of a virtuoso, but with the truly musical insight of a composer. [The piece is] technically difficult...but his mastery of all the problems presented by his own music was unquestionable, and he put great fire and spirit into the performance…. There was an audience of considerable size that showed much interest and enthusiasm in the performance.” Strauss (1864–1949) came from a musical family (his father was principal horn of the Munich Court Orchestra for 49 years) and spent much time and effort on music in his early years, composing more than 140 pieces by the time he matriculated from the Ludwigsgymnasium at age 18. In August 1882, he entered the University of Munich, where he read philosophy, aesthetics, history, art, and literature; but in 1883, at the age of 19, he moved to Berlin to concentrate on music. He also discovered Brahms in Berlin and got hooked on playing cards, a lifelong addiction. |
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Jupiter 2025 - 2026 Season Tickets: $25, $17 ~ Reservation advised Please visit our Media Page to hear Audio Recordings from the Jens Nygaard and Jupiter Symphony Archive Concert Venue:
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Like our Facebook page to see photos, videos, Jupiter in the News ConcertoNet
Strad Magazine ConcertoNet
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As promised, here are the videos of John Field’s Divertissement No. 1 and Sir Hamilton Harty’s Piano Quintet. Fortuitously, our Jupiter musicians had the good sense to record the rehearsal in an impromptu decision, literally minutes before pressing the record button. Pianist Mackenzie Melemed (replacing Roman Rabinovich at the last minute) learned the music in 2 days! Bravo to him. Both works are Irish rarities that were scheduled for the March 16 performances which had to be canceled because of the coronavirus epidemic. Even though the entire program could not be recorded because of technical issues, we are pleased to be able to share with you the 2 musical gems. Enjoy. John FIELD Divertissement No. 1 H. 13 We thank the University of Illinois (Champaign) for a copy of the Divertissement music. Mackenzie Melemed piano
Sir Hamilton HARTY Piano Quintet in F Major Op. 12 Andrew Clements of the Guardian proclaimed the beautiful Quintet “a real discovery: a big, bold statement full of striking melodic ideas and intriguing harmonic shifts, which adds Brahms and Dvořák into Harty’s stylistic mix, together with Tchaikovsky in some passages.” There’s folk music charm as well, reminiscent of Percy Grainger—notably in the Scherzo (Vivace) with its folksy quirks and nonchalance, and the winding, pentatonic melody in the Lento. Our gratitude to the Queen’s University Library in Belfast, Northern Ireland, for a copy of the autograph manuscript of the music. Much thanks, too, to Connor Brown for speedily creating a printed score and parts from Harty’s manuscript. Mackenzie Melemed piano I Allegro 0:00 | |||||||
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Jupiter featured on Our Net News American program opener on March 18, with grateful thanks to Michael Shaffer of OurNetNews.com for recording the matinee concert, and making available the Horatio Parker Suite video for our viewing pleasure. Horatio Parker Suite in A Major, Op. 35, composed in 1893 Stephen Beus piano
More video from this performance can be viewed on our media page |
Jupiter on YouTube NEW YORK CANVAS : The Art of Michael McNamara is a video portrait of the artist who has painted iconic images of New York City for more than a decade, capturing the changing urban landscape of his adopted city. Our Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players provide the music from Brahms’s Piano Quartet in G Minor, underscoring the inspiration the artist has drawn from Jens Nygaard and the musicians. Michael was also our Jupiter volunteer from 2002 to 2010. Here is a video of the Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players performance of the Rondo alla Zingarese movement:
The producer-director, Martin Spinelli, also made the EMMY Award-winning “Life On Jupiter: The Story of Jens Nygaard, Musician.” For more information, visit our media
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“Some great musicians get a statue when they pass away. Some get their name imprinted on the roof of a well-known concert hall. But the late conductor Jens Nygaard has a living tribute: an entire ensemble of musicians and a concert series to go along with it... It is one of the city’s cultural jewels... In the end, if Mr. Nygaard was known for anything, it was unmitigated verve. That’s what the audience regularly returned for, and that’s what they got Monday afternoon. To have a grassroots community of musicians continue to celebrate Mr. Nygaard with indomitable performances like these week after week, even without the power of world-famous guest soloists, is proper tribute. And with more large orchestras and ensembles needing more corporate sponsorship year after year, I, for one, hope the Jupiter’s individual subscriber-base remains strong. New York’s musical life needs the spirit of Jens Nygaard, and Mei Ying should be proud she’s keeping it alive.” Read the complete article on our reviews page. |
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MeiYing Manager All
performances, except where otherwise noted, are held at: Copyright © 1999-2025 Jupiter Symphony. All rights reserved. |
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