Dear Friends,
When pianist Keisuke Nakagoshi told us how eager he was to play the second Fauré Piano Quintet we were all in. Late Fauré is not programmed nearly as often as his early, more extroverted pieces, but Susan and I have grown to love his late style. We’ve never played the second quintet, but the whole idea behind the Ives Collective is to tread new ground with inspired colleagues. When we saw that this was Faure’s Op.115 we thought programming it with Brahms’ Clarinet Quintet, also Op.115, made a perfect pairing. Both are late-in-life pieces when both composers were at the height of their powers.
Our Winter and Spring sets build on last season’s commitment to presenting lesser heard works by women composers. Mélanie Bonis just missed studying at the Paris Conservatoire under Fauré. Like so many talented women, her parents discouraged her studies, forcing her to drop out as soon as she became engaged. It wasn’t until 1891 that she was recognized via a musical competition, one that she entered under the name M. Bonis. The jury awarded her first prize, initially mistaking her for a man! Bonis was a gifted composer of songs, and her Piano Quartet in Bb Major, Op.69 is a wonderful example of her feel for melody and atmosphere.
Dame Ethel Smyth, like Bonis born in 1858, led a very different life from her French contemporary. She was an avid member of the woman’s suffrage movement. Despite suffering the same bigotry toward her work that plagued other female composers – her father was very much opposed to her work as a composer – she became the first female composer to be granted a damehood. Her ambitious String Trio, like so much of her chamber music, has only recently been resurrected.
Our Spring set includes the Quatuor by Germaine Tailleferre whose Piano Trio we performed last season. Tailleferre’s characteristic transparency and melodic sense imbues this gem. Two larger pieces take up the rest of the program: Mozart’s sunny and buoyant C Major String Quintet, K.515 and the much less familiar Piano Quartet in G Major by the German Romantic Emilie Mayer (1812-1883). Mayer was both influential and popular during her time, but was largely forgotten, in part because of the difficulty she had in getting her scores published. Fortunately, her music is undergoing a revival and finally getting into print.
This year the Collective brings three new artists to our performances: Vanderbilt professor and Bay Area native Mariam Adam, clarinetist; Jenny Douglass, principal violist of the Marin Symphony, and violinist Fritz Gearhart, formerly of the Oregon and Chester String Quartets. Dear friends Hrabba Atladottir and Kay Stern return as well as marvelous pianists Keisuke Nakagoshi, Elizabeth Schumann and Gwendolyn Mok. Susan and I are thrilled to collaborate with these fantastic artists and people. Most importantly, we can’t wait to perform these fabulous pieces for YOU!
Stephen & Susan