Free - no tickets required

This exciting and dynamic ensemble is all in the family! Professors Aaron Berofsky (violin) and Kathryn Votapek (viola) are joined by their sons Sebastian (cello) and Charles (piano) for an engaging evening of chamber music, featuring masterpieces by Mozart and Brahms, as well as the charming piano quartet of Joaquín Turina.

Aaron Berofsky, violin
Kathryn Votapek, viola
Sebastian Berofsky, cello
Charles Berofsky, piano

PROGRAM

Mozart: Piano Quartet No. 2 in E-flat Major, K. 493
I. Allegro
II. Larghetto
III. Allegretto

Turina: Piano Quartet in A minor, Op. 67 (1931)
I. Lento – Andante mosso
II. Vivo
III. Andante – Allegretto

Intermission

Brahms: Piano Quartet No. 3 in C minor, Op. 60
I. Allegro non troppo
II. Scherzo: Allegro
III. Andante
IV. Finale: Allegro comodo

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As the ancient contemporary music ensemble’s artistic director, I claim that “It sorta snuck up on us.” 

Celebrating our extraordinary longevity, the Consort attributes its countervailing youthfulness to the fact that, after all, it’s constantly doing new music! 

Sure enough, we announce a series of new music concerts as part of our residency at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, celebrating the Museum’s own 50th anniversary. Programs feature music from the mid-20th century period highlighted in “Revolutions,” the HMSG anniversary exhibition, along with major works associated with the Consort’s half-century history, and new and commissioned music.  

First, however, the Consort returns to historic St. Mark’s on Capitol Hill on September 15th, performing a memorial concert for beloved friend and irrepressible iconoclast, the late Paul Schoenfield.

This free September concert will be at St. Mark’s on Capitol Hill at 2:30pm preceded by a pre-concert discussion at 1:30pm.

PROGRAM:
Carolina Reveille
Three Bagatelles
The Return from Sextet
Elegy, Rag and Boogie
Tango and Tin Pan Alley
Trio for Clarinet, Violin and Piano

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String Quartet in C major, Op. 20, No. 2, Hob. III:32 – Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)
Moderato
Capriccio: Adagio – Cantabile
Menuetto: Allegretto – Trio
Fuga a 4 soggetti: Allegro

Piano Quintet in E-flat major, Op. 44 – Robert Schumann (1810-1856)
Allegro brillante
In modo d’una marcia: Un poco largamente
Scherzo: Molto vivace
Allegro ma non troppo

For more information, go to Garth Newel.

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Chautauqua School of Music faculty members Aaron Berofsky, violin and chair of School of Music Strings, Kathryn Votapek, viola, and cellist Felix Wang are joined by pianist Phillip Bush for a program of piano quartets. In addition to teaching at Chautauqua, Aaron Berofsky is Professor of Violin at the University of Michigan and has served as visiting Professor at the Hochschule fur Musik in Detmold, Germany. Violist and violinist Kathryn Votapek was a member of the Chester String Quartet for 15 years, and now maintains an active career as soloist and as guest artist at music festivals such as Chautauqua throughout the U.S., Canada and Europe. In addition to being the cellist of the Blair String Quartet, Felix Wang is a founding member of the Blakemore Trio and co-principal cellist of the IRIS Orchestra. Pianist Phillip Bush is widely acknowledged as one of the most experienced American chamber music pianists of his generation, and has performed and recorded with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, appeared innumerable times on Brooklyn’s Bargemusic series, and has performed at the Grand Canyon Music Festival, Newport Music Festival, Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival, Cape Cod Chamber Music Festival and at many other festivals.

Program
Joaquín Turina: Piano Quartet in A minor, Op.67
Johannes Brahms: Piano Quartet No.2 in A major, Op.26

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More information on Crystal Valley website

HAYDN Piano Trio No. 39 in G Major, Hob. XV/25, “Gypsy”
BRAHMS Piano Trio No. 1 in B Major, Op. 8

Phillip Bush, piano; Aaron Berofsky, violin; Timothy O’Malley cello

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The American Liszt Society will hold its 2021 Festival, “Liszt and Hungary,” at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance from October 15 through 18, showcasing the music of Liszt and of numerous other Hungarian composers, and highlighting the music and dance of the Romani people, commonly known as “gypsies.”

For further information and to register for the Festival, please visit smtd.umich.edu/liszt2021

The opening event, on October 15th at 4:00 p.m., will be the world premiere of the film Piano Lessons: the Art and Life of German Diez Nieto, a musical descendant of Liszt and protégé of Claudio Arrau. The formal opening, a performance of George Batyi and the Gypsy Stringz, will take place at 8:00 p.m. that evening. Subsequent events begin at 9:00 each morning and conclude each evening with a concert at 8:00 p.m. Programming runs from 19th through 21st century music, ranging from the complete Hungarian Rhapsodies to the Rhapsody in Blue, Béla Bartók, György Ligeti, and beyond. Programs will also feature the influence of music of the Romani people, not only in Hungary but across Europe.

Festival attendees will be able to attend presentations by leading experts on the varying manifestations of style hongrois (Hungarian style) in Western music, observe Hungarian dance steps, enjoy Hungarian food, take in performances of Hungarian solo piano, chamber, and vocal repertoire, and much more!

Performers and lecturers will include national and international artists and scholars as well as faculty and students from the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance.

For further information and to register for the Festival, please visit smtd.umich.edu/liszt2021

Registration Required

OCTOBER 14, 2021 DYNAMIC FATHER AND SON DUO

AARON BEROFSKY, VIOLIN - CHARLES BEROFSKY, PIANO

Sonata in G Major, Kv. 301              Mozart

Allegro con spirito 

Allegro

Long Lost Love                                   Charles Berofsky 

Romance for violin and piano

Suite Populaire Espagnole              

Manuel de Falla

arranged for violin and piano by Paul Kochanski

El Paño Moruno

Nana 

Canción 

Polo 

Asturiana 

Jota 

Intermission 

Sonata No. 7 in c minor, op. 30 #2       

Beethoven 

Allegro con brio 

Adagio cantabile

Scherzo:Allegro

Finale: Allegro, Presto

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FAURÉ & DOHNÁNYI

GABRIEL FAURÉ (1845–1924)
Sonata No. 2 for Cello and Piano in G Minor, Op. 117

I. Allegro

II. Andante

III. Allegro vivo

Denise Djokic, cello • Tao Lin, piano

ERNŐ DOHNÁNYI (1877–1960)
Piano Quintet No. 2 in E-flat Minor, Op. 26

I. Allegro non troppo

II. Intermezzo. Allegretto

III. Moderato

Itamar Zorman, Aaron Berofsky, violin • Kirsten Docter, viola • Edward Arron, cello • Pei-Shan Lee, piano

PROGRAM NOTES

GABRIEL FAURÉ
Sonata No. 2 for Cello and Piano in G Minor, Op. 117 (1921)

Fauré composed his second Cello Sonata in 1921, a productive year in which he also completed his second Piano Quintet, a Nocturne and Barcarolle for piano, and his song cycle, L’Horizon chimérique. Some of this activity served to fill newfound free time—Fauré had been encouraged to retire from his post as director of the Paris Conservatoire the previous autumn. He had held the position for an eventful fifteen years, during which time he implemented radical reforms geared toward broadening the curriculum beyond the traditional technical formation in view of a more broadly conceived artistic education. But by 1920, at age seventy-five, his health was declining, he was experiencing hearing loss and distortion, and he reluctantly relinquished his position.

Even amid the factious world of French music, Fauré was by this time near-unanimously admired and appreciated. His artistic open-mindedness and progressive tolerance fostered a generation of adventurous avant-gardists, while his own style—experimental but unimpeachably grounded in principles of harmony, counterpoint, and form—endeared him to critics of all stripes. The opening of the second Cello Sonata, with its opening subject introduced by the piano’s right hand and trailed in a loose canon by the cello, exemplifies his knack for conjuring the illusion of a free-flowing stream of consciousness, undergirded by a rigorously crafted foundation.

Shortly following his retirement, Fauré was asked by the French government to compose a funerary march in commemoration of the centenary of the death of Napoleon. The invitation was an honor that Fauré had to accept, despite his own reticence at the project, finding the subject “thoroughly intimidating” and himself unaccustomed to composing for military band. Having dutifully completed the commission, he found that he had become attached to his Napoleon theme, and decided to repurpose it for a setting he found more to his liking: it became the Andante of the second Cello Sonata.

ERNŐ DOHNÁNYI
Piano Quintet No. 2 in E-flat Minor, Op. 26 (1914)

Born in Bratislava (then Austria-Hungary), Ernő Dohnányi was a prodigious young composer who made an impressive entry onto the European stage at age 18 with his first opus, the Piano Quintet No. 1—a work which was acclaimed by Brahms, who arranged to have the piece performed in Vienna, thereby launching young Dohnányi’s international career. But even more than for his compositions, Dohnányi grew famous as a formidable pianist, having studied with István Thomán, himself a student of Liszt. After successful tours of the U.S., U.K., and Europe, he was invited in 1905 to teach at the Berlin Hochschule, where he remained for ten years. It was toward the end of his Berlin tenure that he returned to the form which had brought him such early success, completing his second piano quintet in 1914. The work echoes aspects of his first quintet: it, too, introduces “cyclic” elements—themes introduced in the first movement which then return in subsequent movements, giving the work as a whole a sense of unity—and transfigures the dramatic intensity of its minor-key disposition into triumphant major-key dénouement.

The year after completing his second quintet, Dohnányi would return to Budapest, establishing himself as a central force in energizing the city’s musical life. He became director of the Budapest Philharmonic, and later also the national Academy of Music, where he devotedly organized hundreds of concerts each season. He maintained his posts at the Philharmonic and the Academy until legislation was passed in the 1940s requiring that the institutions dismiss all of their Jewish personnel; Dohnányi chose to resign from both rather than carry out the discriminatory law. He left Europe after World War Two, settling first in Argentina and then Tallahassee, Florida, where he taught music at Florida State University until his death in 1960.

Program Notes by Peter Asimov

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ENESCU & DVOŘÁK

GEORGE ENESCU (1881–1955)
Sonata No. 3 in A Minor for Violin and Piano, Op. 25

I. Moderato malinconico

II. Andante sostenuto e misterioso

III. Allegro con brio, ma non troppo mosso

Ian Swensen, violin • Pei-Shan Lee, piano

ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK (1841–1904)
Piano Quartet No. 2 in E-flat Major, Op. 87, B. 162

I. Allegro con fuoco

II. Lento

III. Allegro moderato, grazioso

IV. Allegro ma non troppo

Aaron Berofsky, violin • Kathryn Votapek, viola • Edward Arron, cello • Ran Dank, piano

PROGRAM NOTES 

GEORGE ENESCU
Sonata No. 3 in A Minor for Violin and Piano, Op. 25 (1926)

Enescu’s third Sonata for Violin and Piano bears the subtitle, “in the Romanian folk character”—a carefully chosen phrase. As the composer explained in 1928, “I don’t use the word ‘style’ because that implies something made or artificial, whereas ‘character’ suggests something given, existing from the beginning.”

Enescu had not always been attracted to folk music as a compositional resource, and it would be misleading to overemphasize the importance of nationality (or nationalism) for this versatile composer. Born in a small village in northern Romania, he showed stunning promise as a violinist and composer from an early age. He was sent to Vienna at age seven to enroll in conservatory; while there he brushed shoulders with Brahms. After graduating six years later, he moved on to Paris and entered conservatory once again, now studying composition with Massenet and Fauré, as well as piano and violin. His earlier work primarily reflects his absorption of these two incomparably rich musical worlds and pedagogical traditions—resulting in an eclectic œuvre which, with isolated exceptions, made scant reference to Romanian source materials. As late as 1924, Enescu expressed skepticism about the artistic potential of folk melodies for modern art music.

That is why Enescu’s notion of “character” was a conceptual breakthrough, allowing him, as he put it, to “write valuable compositions whose character will be similar to that of folk music, but which will be achieved through different, absolutely personal means.” For Enescu, this meant unleashing composition from tonal and metrical strictures through the incorporation of a variety of sonic, textural, and rhythmic effects—glissandi and quarter-tones, chordal clusters and melodic heterophony, and the displacement of temporal expectations through the constant manipulation of beats and accents. Achieving these myriad effects entailed an expansion of instrumental techniques made possible only by Enescu’s own virtuosic capabilities on violin and piano alike. To fix such freewheeling ideas onto the page was a challenge in itself—Enescu’s pupil, Yehudi Menuhin described the Sonata as the “greatest achievement in musical notation” of its time—but this feat of inscription remains to be reverse-engineered by performers, who must read between the staves to locate for themselves the “character” imagined by Enescu.

ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK
Piano Quartet No. 2 in E-flat Major, Op. 87, B. 162 (1889)

The stage for the “folkloric character” embodied in Enescu’s Sonata was set in part a generation earlier by composers like Dvořák, who became famous for mining Czech folk musical resources. It was Dvořák’s sets of Moravian Duets and Slavonic Dances that first caught the attention of the Berlin-based publisher Simrock (through the intermediary of Brahms), catapulting him to international stardom in 1878, at a time when German and Austrian palates were piqued by the perceived novelty—“orientalism,” even—of Eastern European dances and tunes. But success as an “exotic” act is double-edged, and as Dvořák’s fame grew over the 1880s, so did anti-Slavic fantasies of Germanic cultural “purity.” While Simrock were ever so eager to publish (and profit from) a second set of Slavonic Dances in 1886, Dvořák pursued in parallel an instrumental style that clung more closely to the Viennese (Brahmsian) mainstream.

It was Simrock who approached Dvořák in 1885 with the commission for a second piano quartet—an ensemble form which had become closely associated with Brahms after the success of his own piano quartets. (Dvořák’s only previous piano quartet had been completed in 1875.) It took Dvořák several years to fulfill the commission; in the interim, he was preoccupied with tours to England, the completion of his opera, The Jacobin, and also that of his glorious Piano Quintet, Op. 81. When he finally got around to the Piano Quartet in 1889, so easily did the melodies flow that the only limiting factor was the speed of his pen; as he put it to his friend Alois Göbl, “My head is full of it. If only one could write it immediately! But it’s no use, I have to go slowly, only what the hand can manage…” The profusion of melodies exudes a palpable joy and warmth, as conflict and drama cede readily to triumph and lyricism. The second movement contains one of the most beautiful themes Dvořák ever composed; the third movement, a shimmering scherzo with a waltz-like lilt, proves infectiously charming. Even as Dvořák cultivated a metropolitan style, the combination of melodic prolificity and rhythmic vigor, overlain with touches of gossamer elegance, distinguishes this piano quartet as unmistakably his.

Program Notes by Peter Asimov

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Aaron Berofsky, violin/chair of School of Music Strings
Kathryn Votapek, viola
Charles Berofsky, piano
Sebastian Berofsky, cello

Repertoire:
W.A. Mozart: Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor, K. 478
Charles Berofsky: Uneasy Dreams
Dvorak: Piano Quartet No. 2 in E-flat minor, op. 87

Chautauqua School of Music faculty members Aaron Berofsky, violin/chair of School of Music Strings and his wife, Kathryn Votapek, viola, are joined by are joined by their award-winning sons, pianist and composer Charles, and cellist Sebastian to create the Berofsky Piano Quartet.

Aaron Berofsky was the first violinist of the Chester String Quartet for fifteen years and has been concertmaster of the Ann Arbor Symphony since 2003. Kathryn Votapek was also a member of the Chester String Quartet for 15 years and now maintains an active career as a soloist and guest artist at chamber music festivals throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe.

For more information, please visit Chautauqua Institution.

Pressenda Chamber Players will perform Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos No. 3 and 5, Vivaldi’s Cello Concerto in C Major, trio sonataby Handel, and music of Baroque composer Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre during a Conservatory Concert at Westmoreland Circle. Concert performers include Aaron Berofsky, Sonya Chung, Juliana Pereira (violin); Amadi Azikiwe, Philippe Chao, Gregory Luce (viola); Sebastian Berofsky, Char Prescott, Tobias Werner (cello); Michael Rittling (bass); Giorgio Consolati (flute); Patrick Merrill (harpsichord). Admission is free with a $20 suggested donation. Families with children are encouraged to attend.

For more information, go to Washington Conservatory of Music

Aaron Berofsky, violin

Kathryn Votapek, viola

Zlatomir Fung, cello

Joseph Marie Clément Dall'Abaco Selected Caprices for Cello Solo

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Divertimento Trio, K. 563

Chautauqua School of Music faculty members Aaron Berofsky, violin and Kathryn Votapek, viola are joined by violinist Yehonatan Berick and cellist John Miche in a program of Ravel and Beethoven masterworks. Serving as one-half of a new collaboration between Chautauqua Chamber Music and the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle (CLSC), this is an especially noteworthy performance. The quartet’s repertoire has been selected specifically for its prominence in CLSC guest lecturer Aja Gabel’s debut novel, The Ensemble — a book based around the lives of a fictional professional string quartet. See Aja Gabel’s CLSC presentation at the Hall of Philosophy on Thursday, July 18 at 3:30 p.m. to get a sneak preview of the Athena Quartet’s July 20 performance and learn more about this innovative collaboration.

For more information, visit CHQ.

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897):  String Sextet in B-Flat Major, Op. 18

Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951):  String Sextet Transfigured Night

Aaron Berofsky, violin

Kathryn Votapek, violin

Amadi Akiziwe, viola

Jan Muller-Szeraws, cello

Tobias Werner, cello

For more information, go to Pressenda.

John Haines-Eitzen, cello; Aaron Berofsky, violin; and Matt Bengtson, piano perform Beethoven’s Archduke Trio, plus a selection by Haydn.

For more information, go to Cornell’s website.