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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 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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Monday, November 3 ♦ 2 PM & 7:30 PM Tickets: $25, $17 ~ Reservations advised Drew Petersen piano Stefan Milenkovich violin Maya Kilburn violin Torron Pfeffer viola Gaeun Kim cello Roni Gal-Ed oboe Vadim Lando clarinet Erik Ralske horn Sir Edward ELGAR Andante and Allegro The manuscript, held in the British Library, is undated but 1878 is considered a likely year of composition. The oboe part of the manuscript is curiously labeled “Xmas Music.” Arranged for oboe and piano from the original for solo oboe, violin, viola, and cello. Almost entirely self-taught, Elgar learned to play the piano, violin, and a variety of other instruments at a young age. (He and his 6 siblings were raised in a vibrant musical environment as they lived above his father’s music shop in Worcester.) He had hoped to study at the Leipzig Conservatory, but his father, an organist and music dealer, could not afford this luxury. After leaving school at age 15, he earned a living in Worcester teaching piano and violin. He also worked as a clerk for a local lawyer, a job he soon abandoned to accept a post conducting the Worcester and County Lunatic Asylum attendants’ band in Powick, just outside Worcester. He also composed dances for the gallimaufry of instruments in the band. In addition, since he was a member of the Worcester Glee Club (as was his father), he wrote and arranged works, played the violin, accompanied singers, and conducted for the first time. The Andante and Allegro may have been written for performance at the Worcester Glee Club, which met at the Crown Hotel. It was composed for Frank, his younger brother who played the oboe and bassoon, and was involved in various musical activities in Worcester, including performing with “Ted” (Edward) in a wind quintet. Frank took over the family music shop, Elgar Brothers, after their father’s death in 1906 and managed it until his own death in 1928. Elgar, the first English composer of international stature since Purcell, liberated England’s music from its insularity. He was born in the small village of Broadheath in 1857 and died in Worcester in 1934. After his marriage in 1889, the couple moved to London, but in 1891 they returned to Malvern, where he had met his wife, and he began to establish a reputation as a composer. Throughout the 1880s and 1890s his experience grew and his style matured as he conducted and composed for local musical organizations. When he died 1934, “He left to younger composers the rich harmonic resources of late Romanticism and stimulated the subsequent national school of English music. His own idiom was cosmopolitan, yet his interest in the oratorio is grounded in the English musical tradition. Especially in England, Elgar is esteemed both for his own music and for his role in heralding the 20th-century English musical renascence [Encyclopedia Britannica].” Elgar was knighted by King Edward VII in 1904, which pleased his wife, especially. Frederick DELIUS Violin Sonata No. 2 RT viii/9 The Sonata was recorded by Yehudi Menuhin and Eric Fenby on piano in 1978. Fenby, Delius’s amanuensis in his last 6 years, is credited with helping Delius, who was debilitated by syphilis, compose a number of works that would not otherwise have been realized. Delius was one of the most distinctive figures in the revival of English music at the end of the 19th century. Sir Thomas Beecham, a livelong devotee of his music and his finest interpreter, called him “the last great apostle in our time of beauty and romance in music.” Elgar described him as “a poet and a visionary.” Born in Bradford in 1862 into a large mercantile family headed by a stern father, Delius played the piano from an early age and had violin lessons (he became an excellent violinist). On leaving school he entered the family wool firm, yielding to his father’s wishes. In 1884 he managed to persuade his father to lend him enough money to set up as an orange grower in Florida. This gave him longed-for freedom and enabled him to start composing seriously. He settled at Solano Grove near Jacksonville, neglected the oranges, and found a friend and music teacher in Thomas Ward. The luxuriant natural environs was conducive to nurturing his musical vision. He particularly loved the songs of the African-Americans living in nearby plantations. At this time, it is alleged that he fathered a son with his lover, an African-American woman. It is said that he later returned to look for her and the son. Delius left Florida in 1886 for Leipzig, where he studied with Carl Reinecke at the Conservatory and befriended Edvard Grieg, who encouraged him to continue composing. Two years later he went to live in Paris. Although he led a bohemian life for a while, his Paris years were musically productive. From 1897 he made his home at Grez-sur-Loing, near Paris, with the painter Jelka Rosen, whom he married in 1903. After the Great War, he manifested symptoms of syphilis, which gradually developed into blindness and paralysis. In his final years, Delius continued composing, working with an amanuensis, Eric Fenby. He died in 1934 and was reburied a year later at St Peter’s Church in Limpsfield, Surrey, attended by “Sixty People Under Flickering Lamps.” In the opinion of musicologist Anthony Payne, “the strength of Delius’s character is too evident in a less purely musical way.… Delius’s music deals with the pristine romance of his formative experience—the sound of [African-American] songs over the still air of Solano Grove, his first knowledge of total love…. Such things are obsessively relived in his music; it may be that his style matured only when he recognized the impossibility of recapturing them in reality [New Grove Dictionary].” Sir Charles Villiers STANFORD Piano Trio No. 3 in A minor “Per aspera ad astra” Op. 158 The Trio was composed during the final months of the First World War and dedicated to the memory of the two sons of Alan Gray, Stanford’s successor as organist of Trinity College and conductor of the Cambridge University Music Society. The young men were killed in the war. The earliest recorded use of the Latin phrase is by the ancient Roman writer Seneca. Born to a musical family, Stanford left Dublin in 1870 at the age of 18 for Cambridge, where he distinguished himself as a choral scholar, organist, conductor, and classics student. He also studied in Leipzig (with Reinecke) and in Berlin (with Friedrich Kiel, at the urging of Joachim) between 1874 and 1876. An illustrious career then ensued; he composed prolifically, conducted, and taught at the Royal College of Music, which he cofounded. Among his pupils were Vaughan Williams, Gustav Holst, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, John Ireland, and Frank Bridge, to name a few. He also was director of the Leeds Festival and conducted the London Bach choir. Stanford loved music of the German-Austrian tradition; he especially admired Gluck and Schumann and often programmed the music of Brahms and Beethoven in concert. The New Grove Dictionary summarized his achievements and influences: “First, he swept away the empty conventions and complacencies which had debased English church music since Purcell.... Second, he set a new standard in choral music with his oratorios and cantatas.... Third, in his partsongs, and still more in his solo songs with piano he reached near perfection both in melodic invention and in capturing the mood of the poem.... [Fourth, he] exercised the most powerful influence on British music and musicians, that of the paramount teacher of composition....” Stanford was knighted in 1902; he died in 1924 and his ashes were buried in Westminster Abbey. Gerald FINZI Interlude Op. 21 The haunting Interlude may have been intended as part of a larger work, possibly a concerto. It looms as an embodiment of his view of music as a confessional for his innermost thoughts and feelings. Melodically and harmonically, Finzi was influenced by Elgar and Vaughan Williams. Composed for Sylvia Spencer, the Interlude was first performed at Wigmore Hall in London on 24 March 1936. The oboist Léon Goossens (the dedicatee) played it with the Menges String Quartet. Goossens came from a celebrated musical family; all 5 children were virtuosi, and Léon became a household name worldwide. Spencer, a pupil of Goossens, was among England’s best oboists who worked tirelessly to promote new works. An agnostic and pacifist of Orthodox Jewish descent, Finzi composed unmistakably British music. Born in 1901 in London, he was the son of a successful shipbroker, who died when Gerald was 7 years old. He studied music with Ernest Farrar (Stanford’s pupil in composition) from 1914 till 1916, when Farrar joined the army, and then with Edward Barstow. Finzi was shocked when Farrar was killed on the Western Front in 1918. The deaths of his father, all 3 of his brothers before the age of 18, and Farrar, instilled in him an intense awareness of the fragility of life. This sense of transience became the most profound aspect of his artistry in his later works. In 1922 he moved to the Cotswolds and worked in tranquility and isolation. The countryside also deeply affected his life and music. When the isolation became oppressive, he returned to London in 1926 and began to study counterpoint with Reginald Owen Morris. He also became acquainted with Vaughan Williams, whose influence he was always to acknowledge and who, in 1928, conducted Finzi’s Violin Concerto. In 1930 Finzi obtained a teaching appointment at the Royal Academy of Music, but gave up the post in 1933 after he married the artist Joy Black and settled in the Wiltshire countryside. Some of his best song cycles were written during this period. Additionally, he devoted himself to growing apples, saving a number of rare English apple varieties from extinction. An avid reader of English prose and poetry, Finzi also amassed an extraordinary literary library of some 3000 volumes, and a fine collection of about 700 printed scores, manuscripts, and books of 18th-century English music (now in university libraries in Reading and St. Andrews). In 1939 the Finzis moved to Ashmansworth in Hampshire, where Gerald founded the Newbury String Players. The group revived 18th century string music and premiered works by his contemporaries. During World War II, he worked for the Ministry of War Transport and lodged German and Czech refugees in his home. After the war, he wrote his best known work in 1949, the Clarinet Concerto. In 1951, Finzi was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma and given less than10 years to live. He managed to continue composing in his quiet, conscientious manner. In 1956 he and Vaughan Williams went on a walking tour in Gloucester. They paused for tea at the local sexton’s cottage, where Finzi contracted chicken pox from the children. His immune system weakened, he died soon after of shingles, complicated by encephalitis, at age 55. Ralph VAUGHAN WILLIAMS Quintet in D Major The Ralph Vaughan Williams Society described the Quintet as “felicitous and fresh…. The piece fairly overflows with exuberance and confidence in its writing for all five players.” It was written in his mid-20s (the year after his marriage) for the chamber concerts of clarinetist George Clinton. After its premiere in the Queen’s (small) Hall on 5 June 1901, it was not performed again until 20 February 2001 (upon his widow’s acquiescence) at the British Library Conference Centre. In 1897 Vaughan Williams had married the gifted cellist and pianist Adeline Fisher, a first cousin of Virginia Woolf. His mother, Margaret, was one of three daughters born to Josiah Wedgwood III and Caroline Darwin. Thus, Charles Darwin was his great-uncle and Josiah Wedgwood was his great-great-grandfather, founder of the pottery at Stoke-on-Trent. Vaughan Williams (1872–1958) is one of the most important composers of the 20th century—an intuitive composer with a career that spanned more than 6 decades. A major accomplishment was his revival of English music, influenced by English folk song and Tudor polyphony. Vaughan Williams studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, and at the Royal College of Music under Charles Villiers Stanford and Hubert Parry. In 1897–1898 he studied in Berlin under Max Bruch, and in 1909 in Paris under Maurice Ravel. About 1903 he began to collect folk songs. “All assessments of Vaughan Williams have emphasized his Englishness. This is a matter of temperament and character no less than of musical style and may be felt to have permeated everything he did…. That he re-created an English musical vernacular, thereby enabling the next generation to take their nationality for granted, and did much to establish the symphony as a form of central significance for the English revival is historically important; but his illumination of the human condition, especially though not exclusively in his works commonly regarded as visionary, is a unique contribution” wrote Hugh Ottaway for the New Grove Dictionary. Vaughan Williams was offered and refused a knighthood, but the Order of Merit was conferred upon him in 1935. |
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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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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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performances, except where otherwise noted, are held at: Copyright © 1999-2025 Jupiter Symphony. All rights reserved. |
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