THE IVES QUARTET announces “VIVA ITALIA”
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Please contact: September 17, 2007
Pam Lampkin, Administrative Director
(650) 224-7849 pam.lampkin@ivescollective.org
Gian Francesco Malipiero – Quartet No.1, Rispetti e Strambotti
Frank Bridge – Quartet No.1. in E minor, “Bologna”
Giuseppe Verdi – Quartet In E Minor
Palo Alto, CA – The Ives Quartet will open its 2007-2008 Home Concert Series with the fall program, “Viva Italia,” an evening of music associated with the
Emilia Romagna region of Italy. This is a celebration of the Quartet’s first summer together teaching, rehearsing and performing in Italy.
New this season, Ives Quartet Home Series’ performances will be prefaced with “up close and personal” pre-concert talks. For “Viva Italia,” Jodi Levitz, Ives’ violist, who lived and worked in Italy for 18 years, will introduce the audience to the evening’s program. She will also share highlights of the quartet’s first summer together in Italy.
The program’s three string quartets share a vibrant Italian spirit and are, in turn, exuberant, passionate, and dramatic. More than Italy, the connection between these works is their reference to past traditions and the integration of these into contemporary idioms, the personal styles of each composer.
In the early 20 th century, a group of young Italian composers that included Gian Francesco Malipiero sought to revitalize Italian instrumental music, distancing themselves from Germanic styles. They did this by turning to the traditions of Renaissance and Baroque music, which inspired various themes, forms, and tonalities. Malipiero’s First String QuartetRispetti e Strambotti (1920) was inspired by old Italian poetic forms.
Competitions also encouraged (composition of) serious instrumental music in the early 1900’s. For one sponsored in 1906 by the Accademia Filarmonica in Bologne, Englishman Frank Bridge (age 25) submitted his first string quartet. Of the 67 submitted only Bridge’s received a ‘mention d’honneur’. Bridge’s skill as a composer was finely sharpened by the depth of his practical musicianship and experience as violist in several quartets, most notably the English String Quartet, in which he played from 1903 into the early 1920s.
Song, in the 19th century, meant opera, the most important, and lucrative, genre of musical expression. The emotional climate of lyric drama seemed best suited to the Italian temperament. Instrumental art music was consequently marginalized; in fact, the only mature instrumental work Giuseppe Verdi ever wrote was his String Quartet in E Minor, composed in Naples in 1873 as a pastime while awaiting the premiere of a delayed production of Aida.
Praised for their “arresting sound — robust, rigorous and beautifully blended,” the Ives Quartet presents powerful live-music experiences that balance established classics audiences love and enjoy with stimulating lesser known works and commissioned projects that introduce listeners to exciting new music.
In a departure from convention, the Quartet combines players with American and European experience and sensibilities, drawing on the talent and experience of the international, solo, orchestral, chamber, and recording careers of its artist members – Bettina Mussumeli, violin; Susan Freier, violin; Jodi Levitz, viola; and Stephen Harrison, cello.
“VIVA ITALIA”
Friday, Sept. 28, 2007, 8 pm
Pre-concert talk at 7 pm
St. Mark’s Episcopal Church
600 Colorado Avenue
Palo Alto, CA
Sunday, Sept. 30, 2007, 7 pm
Pre-concert talk at 6 pm
Le Petit Trianon Theater
72 North Fifth Street
San Jose, CA
Tickets available at www.ivescollective.org or call (650) 224-7849