|
Join Us For Our 2024-2025 Season! |
Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players “This was music-making of a very high order” Fred Kirshnit, The New York Sun |
|||||||
Why the name Jupiter: When Jens Nygaard named his orchestra Jupiter, he had the beautiful, gaseous planet in mind—unattainable but worth the effort, like reaching musical perfection. Many, indeed, were privileged and fortunate to hear his music making that was truly Out of This World. Our Players today seek to attain that stellar quality.
View Our Printable Calendar and Ticket Order Form (pdf) Take a look at our guest artists for this season. |
|||||||
Join us for our next concerts...
Monday, February 3 ♦ 2 PM & 7:30 PM Tickets: $25, $17, $10 ~ Reservations advised Michael Stephen Brown piano Geneva Lewis violin Isabelle Durrenberger violin Natalie Loughran viola Sara Scanlon cello Sooyun Kim flute Roni Gal-Ed oboe Vadim Lando clarinet Karl Kramer horn Gina Cuffari bassoon SCHUBERT Fantasia in F minor D.940 Composed the year he died at age 31, the dedication was announced on 21 February 1828. If Schubert and Caroline were the first to play the divine Fantasia, the first other person to hear it was likely Schubert’s great friend Eduard Bauernfeld, a music connoisseur and dramatist, for whom Schubert and Franz Lachner played it on 9 May at a Schubertiade. It was published posthumously in 1829. The arrangement by Claus Ludwig for string quartet is from the original for piano-4 hands, one of the most ravishing pieces in the piano literature. Countess Caroline Esterházy was born in 1805 into the wealthy and illustrious Esterházy family—the younger of two daughters of Johann Karl Count Esterházy of Galánta. She was a gifted pianist and sensitive musician. Schubert gave the sisters music lessons at their home in Vienna, as well as during the summers of 1818 and 1824 at the family estate in Zseliz. Thereafter, she and Schubert remained friends till his death in 1828. The memoir of Baron Karl von Schönstein, the Count’s close friend, throws some light on the relationship between Caroline and Schubert. However, because it was written in 1857, almost 30 years after Schubert’s death, the details of Schönstein’s recollections are inconsistent and not to be entirely trusted. Regardless, he disclosed that “a poetic flame sprang up in Schubert’s heart for Caroline. This flame continued to burn until his death.” He also recalled that “Caroline esteemed his talent very highly, but did not return this love; perhaps she did not realize the degree to which it existed. I say ‘the degree,’ because that he loved her must have been clear to her from a remark of Schubert’s—his only expression [of his love] in words. When she once jokingly teased Schubert that he had never dedicated a piece of his to her he responded: ‘Why do that? Everything is dedicated to you anyway.’” Further, Bauernfeld divulged in his diary in February 1828 that “Schubert seems to be seriously in love with Countess E[sterházy]. I like that in him. He is giving her lessons.” (To put the revelation in context, the diary entry was written at the time the Fantasia was dedicated to Caroline.) Love exists on many levels, and to say, as some have put forth, that she was the object of his unrequited love may not quite be the case. It could be more realistic that they were soulmates and shared a platonic love. We may never know for sure. Ludwig THUILLE Sextet in Bb Major Op. 6 Written over a period of 2 years, the Sextet is anchored in the classicism of his teacher Josef Rheinberger, while reminiscent of Liszt and Brahms as well. It received the approval of Richard Strauss, his lifelong friend who was instrumental in arranging the premiere performance in 1889 at the Wiesbaden Festival, with Thuille playing the demanding piano part and the winds shining in their harmonies and solo turns. It was well received and appreciated by both the press and public. In the view of musicologist Byron Adams, “Thuille’s enthusiasm for the Mage of Bayreuth was further quickened by his marriage in 1887 to Emma Dietl, who was a passionate Wagnerite. Even so, Thuille retained a certain ambivalence towards Wagner; he once remarked approvingly to a student that ‘The astonishing thing is that you have kept yourself entirely free from the Wagnerian influence!’ As with Schumann, the years following Thuille’s marriage prompted a burst of creative activity. Among the scores that Thuille completed during this joyous period is an attractive Sextet…[which] exemplifies Thuille’s style at its most graceful, fluent, and polished.” Thuille (1861–1907) was both a pupil of Rheinberger, whom he later succeeded as counterpoint teacher at the Königliche Musikschule in Munich, and a lifelong friend of Strauss. Born of Savoyard ancestry in Bolzano (then in Austria, now in Italy), he was orphaned at the age of 11. His stepuncle took him in and oversaw his secondary education in Kremsmünster. There, he served as a chorister in the Benedictine Abbey and studied the organ, piano, and violin. From 1876 he lived with his half-sister’s family in Innsbruck, his expenses paid by the generous widow of Matthäus Nagiller. He continued his studies with Joseph Pembauer and in 1877 met Richard Strauss, who was three years his junior and whose parents were acquainted with the Nagiller family. They became and remained fast friends (interrupted by a quarrel) until his untimely death at age 45. In 1879 Thuille began his studies, steeped in Viennese Classicism, with Josef Rheinberger at the Royal Academy, graduating with honors in 1882. Although he was musically conservative and sternly disciplined by Rheinberger, “a decisive change suddenly occurred in his style through his association with Alexander Ritter, a forceful figure who converted him and…Strauss into rich orchestral colourists in the late Romantic vein. Ritter diverted Thuille’s attention to opera of Wagnerian proportions and encouraged the young composer to cultivate bold harmonic ideas [New Grove Dictionary].” Before his death, Thuille made one other contribution: his Harmonielehre—a treatise on harmony that survived into the 1930s. Antonín DVOŘÁK “Songs My Mother Taught Me” from Gypsy Songs Op. 55 Originally for voice and piano, Fritz Kreisler arranged it for violin and piano in 1914 and performed it frequently. Dvořák composed the songs at the request of the Viennese tenor, Gustav Walter, with texts from a collection of poems by Adolf Heyduk. The song was recommended by Classic FM (UK) as one of “10 beautiful pieces of classical music for Mother’s Day.” The nostalgic lyrics pay tribute to a mother’s tears, memories, and influence:
Bedřich SMETANA Piano Trio in G minor Op. 15 Smetana was devastated by the death of Bedřiška, a musical child with whom he had an especially close relationship. The rhapsodic, heartrending elegiac work with unbridled passion, completed in 2 months, is influenced by Bohemian folk music. It was condemned by critics at the premiere on 3 December 1855, but praised by Liszt (his friend and teacher), and in our time by Harold Schonberg, who said it is “of unusual loveliness.” Many years after its composition, Smetana wrote in a letter to one of his doctors, “The death of my eldest daughter, an exceptionally talented child, motivated me to compose...my Trio in G minor. It was performed the same year in Prague [with Smetana playing the piano part]... The audience was unresponsive and the critics hated it.” A year later, when the Trio was played in Smetana’s Prague apartment, Liszt was in attendance; he was profoundly moved and arranged for subsequent performances in Germany and Austria. Smetana’s wife, Kateřina Kolářová, whom he had married in 1849, was also not well at that time, having been diagnosed with tuberculosis. Smetana was the first major nationalist composer of Bohemia and the founder of the Czech national school of music. The 11th child and first son to survive infancy, Bedřich was born in 1824 to a keen amateur violinist and master brewer in the service of Counts Waldstein and Czernin. First taught by his father, he was playing the violin in a performance of a Haydn quartet by age 5. The following year, he made his debut as a pianist; at age 8 he was composing folk and dance tunes. Although he had no formal musical training, he completed a general education at a school in Pilsen. At the age of 20, Smetana studied composition with the distinguished teacher Josef Proksch in Prague. From 1844 to 1847 he was appointed as resident piano teacher to the family of Count Leopold Thun. This job lifted him out of dire poverty. He also met Liszt, Berlioz, and Robert and Clara Schumann in Prague. Encouraged by Liszt, he opened a piano school in Prague in 1848. Two months before the school’s opening, he participated in the Prague Revolution, which was aborted on 11 June and resulted in Bohemia’s failure to disentangle itself from the autocratic rule of the Austrian Hapsburgs. The event had strongly aroused Smetana’s patriotism—he helped to defend the barricades and wrote revolutionary marches. By 1856, he became so disenchanted with Prague’s stifling atmosphere and discouraged by the cool reception to his Piano Trio that he moved to Gothenburg. He was very productive in Sweden—he wrote his first symphonic poems and was appointed conductor of the Gothenburg Society for Classical Choral Music. After 5 years, he returned to Prague, where he played a leading part in the establishment of the national opera house. In 1874 Smetana became deaf from syphilis, yet he continued to compose until the last few days of his life when his mental faculties broke down, and he was cared for in a lunatic asylum. Before then, on 4 January 1880, Smetana played in his Piano Trio at a concert commemorating the 50th anniversary of his first public performance. At one moment in the Trio, he horrified the audience when he cried out “Pianissimo!” in a stentorian voice. Smetana’s death in 1884 drew an outpouring of national mourning, with many tributes paid to him. Liszt lamented his passing, declaring that “he was undoubtedly a genius.” |
|||||||
Monday, February 17 ♦ 2 PM & 7:30 PM Tickets: $25, $17, $10 ~ Reservations advised Avery Gagliano piano Hao Zhou viollin Isabelle Durrenberger violin Cara Pogossian viola Christine Lamprea cello Gabriel Polinsky double bass Sooyun Kim flute Vadim Lando clarinet Karl Kramer horn Gina Cuffari bassoon Susan SPAIN-DUNK Phantasy Quartet in D minor The Cobbett Competitions, designed to encourage the younger generation of British composers to write chamber music, was sponsored by the industrialist Walter Wilson Cobbett, a chamber music aficionado. He also wished to revive the Elizabethan fantasy form of a single movement that includes a variety of moods and structural elements usually found in 3 or 4 movements. Spain-Dunk’s Phantasy has 4 distinct sub-movements within the larger one, from a bold opening through pastoral and fugal sections, and ending with a chordal version of the theme. Almost forgotten today, Spain-Dunk enjoyed the spotlight in the 1920s. Born in Folkestone in 1880, she played her first concert at the age of 13 and participated with enthusiasm in the flourishing musical life of the town. In 1900 she performed the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, and passed her music exams with honors. She then attended the Royal Academy of Music, where she studied violin with Alfred Gibson (she married his nephew Henry). She also was a pupil Stewart Mcpherson in harmony and won the Charles Lucas Medal for composition. After several of her early compositions were published, she achieved her breakthrough in 1924 when Sir Henry Wood included her “Suite for Strings” in one of his Promenade Concerts. From then till 1927 her works were featured annually at the Proms. Spain-Dunk was also the first woman to conduct a regimental band, and she became the second woman to conduct at the Proms (Dame Ethel Smyth was the first). She later taught harmony and composition at the Royal Academy of Music and at Trinity College in the 1930s. She died in 1962. Sir Charles Villiers STANFORD Serenade in F Major Op. 95 Written in London the same year he was composing his 6th Symphony as well as basking in the success of his Requiem in Düsseldorf, the Serenade premiered at a Broadwood Concert in London’s Aeolian Hall on 25 January 1906. Enthusiastically received, The Times noted its “spontaneity, charm, and classical purity of structure.” Sir Hubert Parry, Stanford’s severest critic, was also impressed, and when he heard it again in March 1913 at a performance by a student ensemble at the Royal College of Music, he described it as “a nice specimen of his [Stanford’s] work.” Professor Jeremy Dibble further stated that it “reveals a side of Stanford’s style in which formal craftsmanship is combined with an enchanting chemistry unique to the composer—Brahmsian adroitness united with Mendelssohnian felicity.” Born to a musical family, Stanford left Dublin at the age of 18 for Cambridge, where he distinguished himself. He also studied in Leipzig (with Reinecke) and in Berlin (with Friedrich Kiel, at the urging of Joachim). 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. The New Grove Dictionary summarizes 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. BEETHOVEN Scottish, Welsh, and Irish Songs The tunes are winsome and the accompanying piano trio occasionally sounds unmistakably like vigorous echoes of his muscular style. Between 1806 and 1818 Beethoven collaborated with a Scottish collector of folk music by the name of George Thomson in arranging more than 100 folk songs for an estimated £550. Frank BRIDGE Piano Quintet in D Minor First written when Bridge was in his mid-20s, the Quintet was radically revised just after he turned 30. The refined version premiered on 29 May 1912 with pianist Harold Samuel and the English String Quartet. Bridge was considered one of the most gifted figures on the British music scene, wearing multiple hats well. He was a composer of poetic insight and consummate technique, an excellent violist, an outstanding conductor and chamber musician, and a remarkable teacher. Born in the seaside resort of Brighton in 1879 to a working class family, Frank was the 10th of a dozen children. His father was a lithographic printer, but was passionate about music; in middle age he switched professions, becoming music director of the Empire Theatre and a violin teacher. From childhood, Frank learned the violin and played in the orchestra, began composing, and substituted for his father as conductor at the Theatre. In 1899 he won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music, where he studied composition with the famously dismissive Charles Villiers Stanford in addition to the violin. When Bridge left RCM in 1903, he took up the viola and played in string quartets, most notably as a member of the English String Quartet, founded officially in 1908. While composing, he earned his income from long hours of playing all over London. He was also called upon to conduct as he was a phenomenal score reader. And he supplemented his income with teaching. Bridge was the private tutor of Benjamin Britten, who later championed his teacher’s music and paid homage to him in Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge. He died in 1941 in Eastbourne. |
|||||||
Jupiter 2024 - 2025 Season Tickets: $25, $17, $10 ~ Reservations advised Please visit our Media Page to hear Audio Recordings from the Jens Nygaard and Jupiter Symphony Archive Concert Venue:
Office Address: Like our Facebook page to see photos, videos, Jupiter in the News ConcertoNet
Strad Magazine ConcertoNet
|
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 | ||||||
|
|||||||
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
page | ||||||
|
|||||||
The
New York Sun Review “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. |
|||||||
Please send any correspondence to |
|||||||
office address: |
|||||||
MeiYing Manager All
performances, except where otherwise noted, are held at: Copyright © 1999-2025 Jupiter Symphony. All rights reserved. |