In three decades of touring, the American has performed in all fifty states and appeared in virtually every important concert hall throughout the world. Their presentations of the complete quartets of Beethoven, Schubert, Schoenberg, Bartok, and Mozart have won widespread critical acclaim. The 1998 MusicMasters Complete Mozart String Quartets performed on a matched quartet set of instruments by Stradivarius are considered to have set the standard for this repertoire.

The American’s innovative approach to concert programming has won them a number of notable residencies in recent years, including "Beethoven the Contemporary" at the University of Michigan, The Six Mozart Viola Quintets at the Aspen Music Festival with Guarneri Quartet violist Michael Tree (broadcast live nationally via Chicago superstation WFMT), and a just-concluded four-year cycle titled “4-5-6…” at Princeton University, where the Quartet performed the complete quintets and sextets of Mozart and Brahms, joined in each concert by renowned guest artists.
Resident quartet at the Aspen Music Festival since 1974 and the Manhattan School of Music in New York since 1984, the American has also served as resident quartet at the Taos School of Music (1979 to 1998), the Peabody Conservatory, and the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. The Quartet's diverse activities have also included numerous international radio and television broadcasts, tours of Asia, and performances with the New York City Ballet, the Montreal Symphony and the Philadelphia Orchestra.

As champions of new music, the American has given numerous premieres, most recently including Richard Danielpour's Quartet No. 4, commissioned by Kansas City Friends of Chamber Music, and Curt Cacioppo's "a distant voice calling", commissioned by Arizona Friends of Chamber Music. Albany Records released their recording of three quartets by Kenneth Fuchs in 2001.

Their extensive discography can be heard on the Albany, CRI, MusicMasters, Musical Heritage Society, Nonesuch and RCA labels. The Quartet is popular with national radio audiences and has been featured on Minnesota Public Radio’s St. Paul Sunday Morning, National Public Radio’s All Things Considered and live broadcasts on WFMT.

Formed in 1974, when its original members were students at The Juilliard School, The American String Quartet was launched by winning both the Coleman Competition and the Naumburg Award in the same year. Individually, the members devote additional time outside the quartet’s active performance and teaching schedule to solo appearances, recitals and master classes.

Menahem Pressler
Honored and decorated by the French and German governments with the highest honors those countries award to civilians, Menahem Pressler was made a Commander of Arts and Letters by France, and from Germany received the Deutsche Bundesdienstverkreuz, Erste Klasse. A founding member and the pianist of the Beaux Arts Trio for all of its 51 years, he has established himself among the world’s most distinguished and honored musicians, with a career that spans more than five decades. Both an outstanding chamber and solo performer, Pressler’s talents have brought him to all of the world’s major music capitals. His musical precision and overwhelming knowledge of piano and chamber music literature have also gained him an international reputation as a remarkable teacher.

Born in Magdeburg in 1923, Germany, Menahem Pressler received most of his musical training in Israel, to which his family, fleeing the Nazis, immigrated in 1939. His life has always been completely devoted to his music. When not on tour with the Beaux Arts Trio, giving solo performances, or teaching master classes, Pressler can be found in his studio at Indiana University in Bloomington, where he holds the rank of Distinguished Professor. He holds honorary doctorate degrees from both the University of Nebraska and the University of Kansas. In 1994, Mr. Pressler was honored with Chamber Music America’s Distinguished Service Award and in 1998 he received the prestigious Gramophone Lifetime Achievement Award. Menahem Pressler was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in October 2000. Pressler has received numerous awards, including England's Record of the Year Award, four Grammy nominations, Musical America's Ensemble of the Year in 1997 with the Beaux Arts Trio, and the German Recording Award. He was a winner of the Debussy Competition in San Francisco and has served as a juror for the Van Cliburn and Queen Elisabeth Competitions. He regularly presents master classes worldwide. He has recorded almost the entire chamber literature with piano on the Philips label.

Menahem Pressler’s world-renowned career was launched after he was awarded first prize at the Debussy International Piano Competition in San Francisco in 1946.

In 1955 he co-founded the Beaux Arts Trio with Daniel Guilet and Bernard Greenhouse. It has since become one of the most enduring and widely acclaimed chamber music ensembles, and has been credited with giving rise to the enormous popularity of the piano trio repertoire. The Trio has a worldwide schedule of over 100 concerts per year. It has recorded and re-recorded almost the entire piano chamber music literature. The Trio will play its final performance at Tanglewood – where the Trio had its debut in 1955 – on August 21, 2008. In addition to over fifty recordings with the Beaux Arts Trio, Menahem Pressler has compiled over thirty solo recordings, ranging from the works of Bach to Ben Haim.

Mr. Pressler resides in Bloomington, Indiana, with his wife Sarah.


Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 1756-1791
String Quartet in C major “Dissonant”, K.465
Adagio - Allegro
Andante cantabile
Menuetto: Allegro
Allegro molto

Mozart and Haydn were the two geniuses who towered above the Classical era in music. And how fortunate for music lovers that these giants were the closest of friends who knew the other’s music intimately; for, particularly in the writing of string quartets, each was inspired by the other to rise to greater heights than either had previously attained. And how sad that Mozart’s premature death in 1791 prevented us from witnessing yet greater achievements resulting from their stimulating “competition”. We know that Mozart was familiar with Haydn’s quartets long before they met since copies of Haydn’s Opus 17 works contain the young prodigy’s notations and the older composer’s crystallizing Opus 20, completed in 1772, provided the obvious inspiration for Mozart’s 1773 quartets. Ten years later Mozart, now a close friend of Haydn, was hard at work on a set of six wondrous quartets that he intended to dedicate to his mentor. Upon their publication in 1785 he wrote: “To my dear friend Haydn. A father who had decided to send out his sons into the world thought it his duty to entrust them to the protection and guidance of a man who was very celebrated at the time and who, moreover, happened to be his best friend. In like manner I send my six sons to you, most celebrated and very dear friend... During your last stay in this capital you expressed to me your approval of these compositions. Your good opinion encourages me to offer them to you and leads me to hope that you will not consider them wholly unworthy of your favor”.

Haydn first heard the works in January and after another recital a month later at which Mozart’s father was present he stated “Before God and as an honest man I tell you that your son is the greatest composer known to me either in person or by name”. In fact, Mozart’s work so inspired the old master that he took his own art to another level and between 1785 and 1803 produced some 34 quartets that would remain the apogee of the form until the ascendance of Beethoven.

Tonight’s piece is the final quartet in the set forever to be known as the “Haydn” quartets. It receives its nickname from the 22 measure introduction which struck contemporary listeners and musicians as bizarre. Many felt they were hearing wrong notes and some musicians even returned it to the publisher for corrections. As Haydn said though “If Mozart wrote it, he meant it”. And, as always, there was method in his seeming madness. In actual fact the first subject of the allegro - a group of lovely themes - is all the more effective because of the tense opening. The movement is replete with sharply contrasting ideas, clearly marked points of articulation, and bold harmonic gestures. The recapitulation (much in the style of Haydn) almost immediately leads to a developmental episode before returning to its function.

The second movement, a beautiful andante cantabile, is constructed with great subtlety. After presenting his leading theme Mozart makes the transition to his second theme by means of a lovely dialogue between the first violin and cello. It is this transitional device that receives the most prominent treatment and it is further set in relief by the way it conceals the reprise.

Like the first movement, the menuetto is filled with contrasting elements of dynamics and texture. Not at all in the manner the lilting and formal minuets common to the time; it fairly crackles with the energy of startling contrasts of harsh unisons cutting in on gentle melodies and sharp staccato notes following smooth lines. The trio, with its use of relentless eighth notes, has a feeling of forward-driving urgency that suddenly gives way to a reprise of the menuetto.

In the finale the composer offers another nod to his mentor as he presents a number of joyful motifs imbued with wit and good humor. A brief development travels to remote keys in Haydnesque fashion before returning to the thematic sequence and a coda that brings the piece to its conclusion.

Alban Berg 1885-1935
String Quartet, Opus 3
Langsam
Massige viertel

Alban Berg is sometimes referred to as the Romanticist of the Schoenberg set. His music never became so austere or harsh that listeners could not relate to it. Despite its sharp dissonances and irregular melodic lines it is suffused with a humanity and passion that audiences can understand and appreciate. Though he received little formal training, Berg began to compose at fifteen and produced a number of songs and piano duets that were much influenced by the composers he most admired: Mahler, Wagner, Brahms, and Strauss. At nineteen he met and began to study under Arnold Schoenberg and his life and music were forever changed. Schoenberg, who would be the young Berg’s only composition teacher, would not only provide his pupil with a solid grounding in basic compositional skills, but also introduce him to his controversial method of atonality, and later to his twelve tone style of composition. All of his mature works are in this vein and generated heated debate and controversy among audiences and critics when first heard. Berg was by nature a painstaking composer and was plagued with ill health until his death in 1935. The entire canon of his maturity numbers only fifteen works. His music remains relevant and accessible today because Berg, despite his radical technical methods was always able to infuse it with a basic humanity. Perhaps more than any other Schoenbergian, he was successful in integrating the older Romantic and post-Romantic ideals with modern musical concepts.

The Opus 3 quartet was written in 1910 at the end of his formal instruction by Schoenberg. It was his last apprentice work and he later wrote that “it was received directly from Schoenberg”. In it he uses certain devices reminiscent of the late nineteenth century composers that he admired, but in most respects he is looking ahead to the 20th century’s rejection of traditional tonality. Although premiered in April of 1910, it was not until a performance at the First International Festival for Chamber Music in 1923 that the piece attracted wide attention and cemented his reputation in musical circles.

The piece is in two movements: the first, introspective and lyrical; the second intense and agitated. The opening movement begins with a flourish that, along with the halting chords that follow, informs the whole work. A climax is quickly reached and after an abrupt silence, the cello, playing pontichello, leads us into a tender second subject. Berg uses the brief development section to work out this second theme. A new figure is introduced in the recapitulation and again the glassy ponticello sound is utilized to great effect. An extended slow coda based on what has come before ends with a reminder of the opening theme.

The second movement is in rondo form featuring five repeats of one theme separated by contrasting episodes. None of these repeats however are an exact restatement; but rather each is a free transformation of the original. Berg manages effectively to unify the entire quartet by reprising the first movement’s opening subject near the end of the piece.

Antonín Dvorák 1841-1904
Piano Quintet in A major, Opus 81
Allegro, ma non tanto
Dumka: Andante con moto; Vivace
Scherzo (Furiant): Molto vivace
Finale: Allegro

Antonín Dvorák is one of those special composers who had the ability to take the very essence of anything he heard, subject it to the genius of his own musical imagination, and produce highly original work that is played and loved to this day. Against the wishes of his father, who introduced him to music, but fervently hoped he would enter the struggling family business, young Dvorák chose music as a career. With the financial help of an uncle, he began serious study at sixteen and for the next five years took any musical job he could find in order to continue his education; often earning barely enough to feed and clothe himself. Upon the completion of his courses he took a low paying orchestral position in the Bohemian National Opera and would spend eleven poverty wracked years in that post. But all this time he was patiently learning his craft: composing, revising, and perhaps most importantly, listening. His earliest work reflected his admiration of Mozart, Schubert and especially Beethoven. While still in his twenties he came under the sway of the great Czech composer Bedrich Smetana who set him on the path he would follow the rest of his days. With Smetana as his guiding light he abandoned his Germanic style and began to write Bohemian music, often using the forms and melodies taught him as a child as his inspiration and foundation. His new nationalistic compositions brought him to the attention of Brahms who helped get him a commission for a set of Slavic dances that made his reputation in Europe. By 1890 he was among the most influential figures in music and was offered the directorship of the National Conservatory of Music in New York. Just as he had with the folk music of his native Bohemia, he was able to absorb and bend the songs and spirituals of African Americans and the unique rhythms of Native Americans to his own musical imagination.

Dvorák was a prolific composer and produced masterworks in many forms. His considerable chamber music output includes fourteen string quartets, the piano quintet, four piano trios, two piano quartets, a viola quintet, string sextet, string trio and some miscellaneous pieces. The best among them lean heavily on Bohemian or American folk idiom but Dvorák never quoted existing melodies. It was his practice rather to absorb and then incorporate their patterns and rhythms into his own highly individual compositions.

Tonight’s piece was the product of many years’ thought, composition, and revision. As much as any of his work it epitomizes his nationalistic style, with the second and third movements utilizing the popular folk forms Dumka and Furiant.

The piece opens with the cello intoning a lovely lyrical theme. This melody undergoes a series of transformations before a second theme is introduced by the viola. In this theme too, Dvorák varies the melody at once, changing from serious and solemn to joyful. The two subjects are fully developed before a brief recapitulation ends the movement.

The second movement is based on the Dumka which is a narrative type folk song that alternates slow, elegiac themes with refrains of gay vivacity. The movement beautifully conveys the spirit of the Slavic folk ballads that inspired the composer.

The scherzo is parenthetically labeled “Furiant” - a lively Bohemian dance in 3-4 time with a characteristic cross rhythm. Normally fiery and impulsive in character, Dvorák here interprets it more as a fast waltz with a contrasting slow middle section. It ends with a short repeat of the first part.

Combining the high spirits and vigor of a peasant dance with the playfulness of a humorous folk song, the finale, which includes a fugal section in the development and a chorale in the coda, simply scintillates. Dvorák gives us the perfect conclusion to a work that must surely be considered one of the finest piano quintets in the literature.

Wed.
October 29, 2008 7:30
Antares
The Indiana History Center
450 West Ohio Street

Wed.
November 19, 2008 7:30
Quattro Mani
Music for two pianos
The Indiana History Center
450 West Ohio Street

Wed.
March 11, 2009 7:30
Belcea String Quartet
The Indiana History Center
450 West Ohio Street

Wed.
April 22, 2009 7:30
Brentano String Quartet
Indianapolis Central Library
Clowes Auditorium
40 East St. Clair St

Sat.
June 6, 2009 7:30
Guarneri String Quartet
Christel DeHaan
Fine Arts Center
University of Indianapolis
1400 East Hanna Avenue