Saturday, February 24, 2007 at 8pm

The Berlin Piano Quartet

Burkhard Maiss, Violin
Philip Douvier, Viola
Bogdan Jianu, Cello
Tao Lin, Piano

PROGRAM

Sonatina in D major, D. 384
Franz Schubert (1797-1928) - (arr. Philip Douvier)
(originally for violin and piano)
Allegro molto
Andante
Allegro vivace

Piano Quartet in E-flat major, Op 47
Robert Schumann (1810-1856)
Sostenuto assai
Scherzo
Andante cantabile
Vivace

• INTERMISSION •

Piano Quartet in B minor, Op. 3
Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)
Allegro molto
Andante
Allegro molto
Allegro vivace

About the Artists

The Berlin Piano Quartet was founded in the year 2000, when the Jacques Thibaud String Trio from Berlin met and first performed with the Shanghai-born pianist Tao Lin at the Mainly Mozart Festival in Miami. Since then they have toured extensively together, with three re-engagements at Mainly Mozart Miami and concerts at NYC’s Rockefeller University, Washington, D.C.’s Dumbarton Concerts, Chautauqua, Music Mountain in Connecticut, and the Athenaeum in La Jolla, CA. The four musicians are the founding members of the Peaceful Bend Chamber Music Festival in Rolla, Missouri.

The Jacques Thibaud String Trio, prize-winners in the prestigious 1999 Bonn Chamber Music Competition, was founded at the Berlin School of Art in 1994. Since then, the ensemble has performed throughout Europe, Japan and North America, receiving tremendous acclaim from audiences and critics alike.

Calling their playing “spontaneous and commanding,” the New York Times said, “this could be the first string trio in some time to have a major career.” As another music critic wrote, “What would attract this generation to concert music? For starters, how about an ensemble whose members look like a boy band, exhibit no apparent pretension and play with the passion of Nine Inch Nails? Meet the Jacques Thibaud String Trio.”

With their charm, youthful exuberance and astounding virtuosity, the Trio has delighted audiences of all ages in large and small venues. In the U.S., they have appeared at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, New York City’s Frick Collection (twice), Washington DC’s National Gallery, hundreds of other venues including Stanford University, the Caramoor Festival, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and cities including Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, San Diego, Milwaukee, Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Memphis, Indianapolis, Phoenix, Tucson, Salt Lake City and Honolulu. As Ensemble-in-Residence at the 2001 Florida International Festival, they drew an audience of over two thousand to their final concert. They have also given successful residencies in a settings ranging from conservatories to music camps to an Indian reservation in Arizona.

Internationally, the Trio has appeared at London’s Wigmore Hall, throughout Germany, in major Japanese cities on several tours, and at some of Europe’s most prestigious festivals including Belgium’s Musica Mundi, Gidon Kremer’s Echternach Festival in Luxembourg, and Denmark’s Roskilde Schubert Festival.

Recent and upcoming activities include a performance at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center for the Mostly Festival; being Ensemble-in-Residence at the Bravo Vail! Festival; appearing in Chicago, Washington D.C. (televised and broadcast on radio worldwide by Voice of America); at Wolf Trap; on UCLA’s prestigious Schoenberg Hall series; tours with flutist Eugenia Zukerman; and breaking the venerable Music Mountain Festival’s long-standing “string quartets only” policy, receiving an immediate return invitation! Earlier this year, they gave five performances in San Francisco and other cities of Mozart’s rare, unfinished Sinfonia Concertante for Violin, Viola, Cello and Orchestra with the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra. Further information is available at www.thibaud-trio.de.

Pianist Tao Lin’s appearances in Asia, North America and Europe have brought unanimous critical accolades and praise for his subtle, intimate pianism and brilliant technique. Born into a musical family in Shanghai, China, Tao Lin was admitted to the Shanghai Conservatory at eight, where his progress was rapid and resulted in his winning prizes in numerous competitions, including the Alexander Tcherepnin Award.

As a soloist, he has performed with the Winnipeg Symphony, Miami Chamber Orchestra, Knoxville Civic Orchestra, and University of Miami Symphony. A devoted chamber musician, Mr. Lin has been collaborated with many distinguished string quartets and esteemed soloists.

Mr. Lin was awarded top prizes in the competitions of the National Society of Arts and Letters, the Music Teacher’s National Association, and the Palm Beach International Invitational, among others. He was also a finalist in the 1st International Piano e-Competition and the 1st Osaka International Chamber Music Competition as a member of the Shanghai Trio.

Mr. Lin has worked with a series of distinguished teachers including Leon Fleisher, Joseph Kalichstein, John Perry, Rita Sloan, Stephen Hough, Ivan Davis, and Roberta Rust. His recordings for the Piano Lovers record label include works by Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and Balakirev.

About the Program

Franz Schubert (1797-1828) (arr. Philip Douvier)
Sonatina in D major, D. 384 (originally for violin and piano)

Schubert’s entire output for violin and piano—three sonatinas, a sonata (“duo”), a rondo, and a fantasy—can fit on two CDs. Rather short measure from a composer whose lyric gifts engendered over 600 songs and whose training as a violinist gave him unusual insight into the instrument’s power to emulate the human voice. His schoolmaster father, Franz Theodor Florian, was his first violin teacher. Later, as a pupil at Vienna’s Konvikt (imperial choristers’ school), Schubert was a first violinist in the student orchestra. He also took part in his family’s chamber music gatherings, at which he usually switched from violin to viola. — Dennis D. Rooney

Robert Schumann (1810-1856)
Piano Quartet in E-flat major, Op 47

In September of 1840, Robert Schumann married the love of his life, Clara Wieck. Clara was a gifted pianist and composer in her own right and Schumann obviously found her inspirational. The 12 months after their marriage saw him complete his famous song cycles, his first 2 symphonies, several other orchestral works and the first movement of his great piano concerto. Despite her obvious positive influence, their relationship could be quite tempestuous. When she embarked on a concert tour of Denmark in 1841, Schumann felt slighted and his creativity seemed to stall. He launched himself into studying the string quartet scores of Beethoven, Mozart and Haydn, drowning his melancholy in “beer and Champagne.” When Clara returned, he once again took up his pen. It was during this period of renewed productivity that Schumann completed, not only this piano quartet, but his three string quartets Op 41, and his piano quintet.

At the time, the heart of the romantic era, chamber music was making the transition from the forum of private entertainment to that of the concert performance. Perhaps this explains the experimentation by Schumann and his contemporaries Mendelssohn and Brahms with the more complex, larger forms like the piano quartet and piano quintet, perhaps in an effort combine the intimacy provided by the string dialogue with the bravura and virtuosity of the new and popular generation of pianists at the time.
The influence of Mozart, Beethoven and Haydn is obvious in the way Schumann pays special attention to the form and unity of this work. The slow sostenuto material introduced at the beginning demarcates the different sections of the opening movement. It also serves as the basis for the allegro which follows.
The scherzo clearly shows the influence of Mendelssohn, in its light sparkling, undulating imitation, shaped by the bass line of the piano. The slower trios are more quintessentially Schumannesque, melding seamlessly with the quicker material. The curt ending of the movement, in the style of the “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” is another “hats off” to his good friend.

The Andante is a poignant, tender melody exchanged between the different instruments. This material is varied only slightly. The delicate coda brings this warm, noble movement to a close. The final three chords anticipate the opening of the finale and provide material for the Vivace, in which this simple pattern is subject to a vigorous “working out” in fugato style. This material is contrasted with a smoother second theme. This movement, perhaps more than any of others demonstrates the unrestrained emotional drive that we associate with the composer.

Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)
Piano Quartet in B minor, Op. 3

Schumann said of Mendelssohn, “he is the Mozart of the 19th century. The most illuminating of musicians, who sees more clearly than others through the contradictions of our era and is the first to reconcile them...”

Like Mahler, Felix Mendelssohn was also sixteen when he wrote this piece, the Piano Quartet, Op. 3 in b minor. But, unlike Mahler, this prodigy had many works to his credit already. This particular piece, however, is a landmark, for it decided Mendelssohn’s choice of career.
Despite Felix’s brilliance, his father was not convinced that a musical career was the right thing. Music in the 19th century was not considered a fit career for a gentleman (some things never change...)

Abraham Mendelssohn decided to consult the most important musician he knew, Luigi Cherubini, during one of the family’s many trips abroad, this one to Paris. Fortunately for all of us, Cherubini heard the b minor Piano Quartet and recommended the boy become a composer. That same year young Felix wrote the great Octet and the next, A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

The privileged and traveled young man met many famous people (in that same trip to Paris he met musical luminaries like Hummel, Rossini, Kreutzer and Meyerbeer), but none dazzled him like Goethe. He visited the famous poet at least five times as a youth and dedicated this Quartet to him (Goethe was said to be very pleased by this).
Features that no doubt impressed Cherubini were the rich (though Cherubini thought it a bit “overdressed”), sweet chromaticism of the slow movement, and especially the lively, “fairy-like” 3/8 Scherzo, prefiguring the brilliant signature Scherzo from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The Finale brings back the theme from the First Movement near its conclusion, giving continuity to this surprisingly mature work. — Paul Stevens