DALLAS, Texas (September 1, 2022) – The Nasher Sculpture Center announces the 2022-2023 season of the critically acclaimed concert series Soundings: New Music at the Nasher, which returns to the Nasher after a three-year hiatus.
October 5 and 6, 2022
Music From Yellow Barn
The World of the Spirit and the Consciousness of the Poetic Mind: The String Quartets of Robert Schumann
PROGRAM I (Wednesday, October 5th)
Haydn: String Quartet in C Major, Op.20 No.2
Schumann sketches
Mozart: String Quartet in B-flat Major, K.589
Mendelssohn: String Quartet in F Minor, Op.80, III: Adagio
Schumann: String Quartet No. 1 in A Minor, Op.41, No.1
PROGRAM II (Thursday, October 6th)
Schumann: String Quartet No. 3 in A Major, Op.41, No.3
Schumann sketches
Beethoven Op.127, II: Adagio, ma non troppo e molto cantabile
Haydn: String Quartet in F Minor, Op.55 No.2, I: Andante più tosto allegretto
Schumann: String Quartet No. 2 in F Major, Op.41, No.2
Haydn: Op.55 No.2, IV: Finale. Presto
Of his string quartets it was written that Schumann had found a solution, “in which for a long time he himself did not believe, that of creating significant individual work in an artistic genre that has already been developed to the full and has reached its peak."
Schumann had indeed pored over these "peaks" of string quartet writing, those of Beethoven, Mozart, and Haydn, and written of them and of the succession of artistic generations, "…we love the struggle of youth for what is new, and Beethoven, who struggled till his last breath, is for us a lofty model of human greatness. But in the orchards of Mozart and Haydn there are also trees heavy with fruit which cannot easily be ignored…"
On September 13th, 1842, Clara Schumann's birthday, her husband surprised her with the gift of his three string quartets. Of these (and her husband) she wrote, "My veneration for his genius, for his mind, for everything about him as a composer, grows with every new work! As for the quartets, I can only say that they delight me down to the smallest detail. Everything is new…"
Over the course of two evenings, in two distinct concerts, the performance of Schumann's three quartets, intertwined with wisps of Schumann's own sketches for these works and the music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven from which he took inspiration, sheds light on how we define what is "new" in art, and why that is important.
Led by violinist Anthony Marwood, Yellow Barn musicians include So-Young Choi, Julia Mirzoev, and Grace Park, violins; Natalie Loughran and Rosemary Nelis, violas; and Natasha Brofsky, Edvard Pogossian, and Aaron Wolff, cellos.
Saturday, February 4, 2023
Songs Of Our World: Three Voices of Our Last 100 Years
György Ligeti (1923-2006): Études
George Crumb (1929-2022): Black Angels: Thirteen Images from the Dark LandI
Valentin Silvestrov (b.1937): Stille Lieder (Silent Songs)
“I believe that Music — even if it cannot be ‘sung’ — is song nevertheless; it is neither philosophy nor a world view, it is the song of the world about itself, as if it were a musical testimony to existence.” —Valentin Silvestroy
Valentin Silvestrov's words resonate throughout this program of discovery, parable, and memory. Soundings celebrates the music of these three distinct voices of our time.
Sunday, February 5, 2023
Widmann and Beethoven, in memory of Roger Tapping
The Juilliard String Quartet
James MacMillan: Untitled work for Roger Tapping—World Premiere
Beethoven: String Quartet in B-flat Major, Op.130
Jörg Widmann: String Quartet No. 8 (Study on Beethoven III)
Jörg Widmann: String Quartet No. 10, “Cavatina” (Study on Beethoven V)
Beethoven: String Quartet in B-flat Major, Op.133, Grosse Fuge
Jörg Widmann's embrace of Mozart, Schumann, Schubert, and so many others that echo through his music, now focuses on Beethoven. The Juilliard Quartet brings two of Jörg Widmann's "Five Studies on Beethoven" to Soundings, alongside the Beethoven quartets that inspired them.
This program came about largely through the vision of Roger Tapping, the Juilliard Quartet's violist of 10 years, and a frequent artist in the Soundings series. This concert is dedicated to his memory and opens with the premiere of a work written for solo viola by his friend James MacMillan. It is one of several new works honoring Roger's legacy.
Tickets purchased for the October 2022 concerts include both evenings' performances, are $60 for Nasher Members and $70 for non-members, and are available at www.nashersculpturecenter.org/soundings.
Individual tickets must be purchased for each concert for the February 2023 dates and are $30 for Nasher Members and $35 for non-members, also available at www.nashersculpturecenter.org/soundings.
Tickets go on sale on September 1, 2022.