InterHarmony Concert Series: The Soul of Élégiaque

THE SOUL OF ÉLÉGIAQUE: Resurrection in Music
In music, nothing is ever really lost. Within its bounds, great composers and great performers live on forever. On November 6, the anniversary of Tchaikovsky’s death, IIMF musicians take up the impossible battle that music has waged against death since Orpheus picked up the harp. In an unusual program of elegies and laments, including some of the most heart-rending and beautiful music ever committed to paper, the elegiac soul goes beyond mere grief: it promises resurrection.

Tchaikovsky’s first and only “Piano Trio in a minor, Op. 50,” subtitled In memory of a great artist, was his monument to the memory of his friend and mentor, Nikolai Rubinstein. When Tchaikovsky died, this piece would become his own elegy, and was performed at his funeral. The trio itself has enjoyed a distinguished afterlife in the elegiac trios of Arensky, Rachmaninoff and Shostakovich. Despite what Tchaikovsky called the “funereal and mournful tone” of the piece, it is never more than a cadence away from pure joy, as the composers loses himself in recollections of his lost friend, triumphing over time and basking in ecstatic harmony. He rushes back and forth through the stages of grief, from sorrow to nostalgia, from crushing despair to the promise of reconciliation.
Performers: Qian Zhou (violin), Misha Quint (cello) and Inesa Sinkevych (piano)

Ysaÿe’s searching “Poème élégiaque, Op. 12” is one of the absolute high points of the violin repertoire. Building on the virtuoso pieces of the 19th century, the so-called ‘Tsar of Violin’ used devices like scordatura, tuning down the violin’s lowest string to give it a darker, warmer timbre, to stunning emotional effect, elevating them above mere bravura techniques. The ‘poem’ provided Ysaÿe with a new freedom of expression, beyond the strictures of the sonata or concerto form. This new form of elegy would live on in the “Poème” of Ysaÿe’s friend, Chausson.
Performers: Qian Zhou (violin) and Inesa Sinkevych (piano)

The “Trio pathétique,” an early work by Mikhail Glinka, is surely a forerunner of Tchaikovsky’s “Piano trio,” with its plaintive melodies and unreserved romanticism. Under the influence of Bellini, the father of Russian classical music turns the melancholy folk songs of his homeland into a work of operatic lyricism. Heartbroken and desperately ill during a long stay in Italy, Glinka inscribed the manuscript: “I have known love only by the pains that it causes.” But the work is anything but despairing, as if Glinka's afflictions could not quite suppress the spirit of playfulness and delight that animates his music. He, too, feels the curious joy of contemplating and, in the beauty of his music, overcoming suffering and loss.
Performers: Howard Klug (clarinet), Misha Quint (cello) and Inesa Sinkevyh (piano)

Dominick Argento’s song cycle, “To be Sung upon the Water,” for voice, clarinet and piano, brings these meditations up to the 20th century. America’s leading composer of lyric opera and art song, Pulitzer Prize winner Dominick Argento descries the voice as “our representation of humanity.” In this work, Argento, a “true American romantic,” grapples with the memory of the great Austrian romantic, Franz Schubert, the so-called “Prince of Song”. Combining subtle musical homage with a profound reflection on Schubert’s themes of ambiguity, love and mortality, “To be Sung upon the Water” balances the inevitability of life’s passing against its indelible moments of beauty. The songs and sonnets of Wordsworth provide the texts for this cycle. Standing on the shores of Lake Como, where Glinka wrote his trio, Wordsworth's narrator looks out beyond the water's edge, where speech stops – and all music begins.
Performers: Stephen Ng (tenor), Howard Klug (clarinet) and Inesa Sinkevych (piano)

ARTIST BIOS

Clarinetist HOWARD KLUG is Professor of Clarinet in the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University, Bloomington. A former member of the US Air Force Band in Washington, D.C., where he was a featured soloist on flute, clarinet and saxophone, Howard Klug was also the principal clarinetist of the Fresno Philharmonic, Bear Valley Festival Orchestra, Sinfonia da Camera and the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra. He was also a member of the Columbus (OH) Symphony Orchestra and the Grant Park Symphony. Howard Klug has been a concerto soloist with the Fresno Philharmonic (on flute and clarinet), the Bear Valley Festival Orchestra, the Columbus Symphony Orchestra, Camerata Orchestra, Belgian Radio Orchestra and the Kamerorkest of the Staatsacademie of Vilnius. His extensive chamber music affiliations have included the Illinois Trio, the Illinois Woodwind Quintet, the Chicago Ensemble, Trio Indiana and fourte’. He regularly gives master classes in Vienna and London, as well as at the
InterHarmony International Music Festival in Germany.

Heralded for his “powerfully expressive voice” (Washington Post), and as “a superb singer… with a soaring voice in the extreme registers that could be simply described as amazing” (New York Concert Review), STEPHEN NG is known as an opera, oratorio, recital, and new music performer. He has been featured as tenor soloist with Amsterdam’s De Nederlande Opera, in the staged version of Stravinsky’s Threni, directed by renowned Peter Sellars. His portrayal of Evangelist in Bach’s Passions has received much acclaim, and he has performed as soloist with Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Orchestra Iowa, Washington Bach Consort, City Chamber Orchestra of Hong Kong, and Lucerne, Tanglewood and Aspen Festivals, working with conductors such as James Levine, Nicolas McGegan, Pierre Boulez, Paul Hillier, and Daniel Reuss.

Recently he has premiered two operas: Jeffrey Ching’s Before Brabant for the Hong Kong Arts Festival 2014, and Chuck Holdeman’s Young Meister Bach for the Bethlehem Bach Choir. His CD Janáček’s The Diary of One Who Vanished was released by Clear Note Publications. Of this, Journal of Singing writes “Ng, a tenor with an impressively eclectic resumé, is simply superb in every respect. His voice is gorgeous and distinctive.” His second CD, titled A Soft Florida Rain: Ng sings Juusela, was released in 2013. Born and raised in Hong Kong, he received his M.M. at New England Conservatory and D.M. at Indiana University. He has served as Associate Professor at Florida’s Stetson University, and is currently on the voice faculty at West Chester University of Pennsylvania. During the summer he is also a member of the artistic faculty at the InterHarmony International Music Festival in Sulzbach-Rosenberg, Germany. www.stephenngtenor.com

Cellist MISHA QUINT made his orchestral debut at the age of 13 after winning first place in the Boccherini Competition in St. Petersburg. Some of the celebrated orchestras that Quint has performed with include: Orquestra Sinfônica do Teatro Nacional do Brasilia, The Metropolitan Symphony, New York Chamber Orchestra, The National Irish Symphony, Brooklyn Philharmonic, London Soloists Chamber Orchestra at Queen Elizabeth Hall, The Moscow State Symphony Orchestra, The Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra, Leningrad State Orchestra, Orchestra of Classical and Contemporary Music and the Symphony Orchestras of Latvia and Georgia. Quint has worked with an equally illustrious group of conductors, including Maxim Shostakovich, Paul Lustig Dunkel, Colman Pearce, Sidney Harth, Ravil Martinov, Camilla Kolchinsky, Yaacov Bergman, Franz Anton Krager and Ira Levin, and premiered works the most outstanding composers of today including Sophie Goubadalina, Robert Sirota, Steven Gerber, Thomas Fortmann, Nathan Davis, and Alfred Schnitke. Quint is an active chamber musician and has performed with such artists as Nikolai Znaider, Bela Davidovich, Sherban Lupu, Andrzej Grabiec, Yuri Gandelsman, Boris Kushnir, and Mikhail Kopelman.

Misha Quint started founding music festivals in Europe in 1997 with the creation of The International Cello Festival in Blonay, Switzerland, followed by the Soesterberg International Music Festival in Holland in 1998. Quint established the InterHarmony Music Festival in Geneva, Switzerland in 2000, and has since moved iterations of the festival to San Francisco, the Berkshires in Massachusetts, Schwarzwald, Germany, Sulzbach-Rosenberg, Germany, and Tuscany, Italy. Quint is currently on the faculty of the Preparatory Division at Mannes College The New School for Music, in Manhattan. www.mishaquint.com

Ukrainian-born pianist INESA SINKEVYCH has risen rapidly into the musical spotlight, captivating audiences around the world as recitalist, chamber musician and orchestral soloist, in venues such as the Mann Auditorium in Tel Aviv, the Purcell Room at the Royal Festival Hall in London, the Palau de la Música Catalana in Barcelona, and the Hong Kong City Hall, as well as performing as soloist with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, the Minnesota Symphony Orchestra, the Gulbenkian Orchestra of Lisbon, and the Gran Canaria Philharmonic of Spain, among others. A laureate of the 12th Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition, Inesa has also won first prizes in the Maria Canals International Piano Competition in Barcelona and at the Concurso Internacional de Piano Premio “Jaén” in Spain, as well as awards in the Minnesota International Yamaha Piano-e-Competition, the Vianna da Motta and the Porto international competitions in Portugal, the Casagrande International Competition in Italy, the Panama International Competition and the the Cidade del Ferrol and the Spanish Composers competitions in Spain.

Ms. Sinkevych has recently received her Doctor of Musical Arts Degree at the Manhattan School of Music under the tutelage of Solomon Mikowsky. She has been a member of the Manhattan School of Music piano faculties of the College Division since 2014 and the Precollege Division since 2008.

QIAN ZHOU is an internationally acclaimed violinist, recording artist and master teacher. Born in Hangzhou, China, she trained at the Shanghai Conservatory, completing her studies with Berl Senofsky at the Peabody Conservatory. She won first prize in the China National Competition in 1984 and the First Grand Prize at the 1987 Marguerite Long-Jacques Thibaud Competition in Paris. Described as a poet “who creates beauty and happiness,” she has been a frequent recitalist and soloist with leading orchestras and chamber ensembles across the globe. In 2003, she became the founding Head of Strings at the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory in Singapore and her students are achieving considerable success around the world. Much in demand as well for her masterclasses, she combines her talents as a soloist, recitalist and chamber musician with her passion for teaching. Qian Zhou plays a 1757 J.B. Guadagnini, generously loaned by Mr. and Mrs. Rin Kei Mei.