Events & Tickets

Chamber Music
Chamber Music: Weiss Plays Mozart
New World Center, Michael Tilson Thomas Performance Hall
Orion Weiss—“an effortlessly brilliant performer with technique to burn” (The Arizona Republic)—returns for an intimate afternoon of musical gems. Known for his affinity for chamber music, Weiss joins NWS Fellows for Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s First Piano Quartet, a stormy drama with concerto-like virtuosity, and Lili Boulanger’s Of a Sad Evening, a work hidden for over 60 years by the composer’s sister and fellow composer, Nadia. Miami-based composer Dorothy Hindman asks “can we erase the past?” in her Untitled I, while Witold Lutosławski called his Dance Preludes his “farewell to folklore.” Joining in the performance are musicians from The Cleveland Orchestra.
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Program
Albert Roussel
(1869-1937)
Approx. Duration: 7 minutes
Divertissement for Piano and Winds, Op. 6
(1906)
Orion Weiss, piano
Jessica Sindell*, flute; Thomas Friedle, oboe
Robert Woolfrey*+, clarinet; Maggie O’Leary, bassoon
Nathaniel Silberschlag*, horn
Dorothy Hindman
(b. 1966)
Approx. Duration: 12 minutes
Untitled I for flute/bass flute, violin, percussion and piano
(2019)
Allison DeFrancesco, flute/bass flute; Jessica Lee*, violin
Marc Damoulakis*+, percussion; Wesley Ducote, piano
Lili Boulanger
(1893-1918)
Approx. Duration: 10 minutes
D’un soir triste for Violin, Cello and Piano
(1917-18)
Beatrice Hsieh, violin; Justin Park, cello
Orion Weiss, piano
Intermission
Witold Lutosławski
(1913-1994)
Approx. Duration: 10 minutes
Dance Preludes for Nine Winds and Strings
(1954)
Allegro molto
Andantino
Allegro giocoso
Andante
Allegro molto
Jessica Sindell*, flute; Thomas Friedle, oboe
Robert Woolfrey*+, clarinet; Maggie O’Leary, bassoon
Nathaniel Silberschlag*, horn
Jessica Lee*, violin; Carolyn Farnand, viola
Mark Kosower*, cello; Logan May, bass
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
(1756-1791)
Approx. Duration: 27 minutes
Quartet No. 1 in G minor for Piano and Strings, K. 478
(1785)
Allegro
Andante
Rondo
Orion Weiss, piano
Ka-Yeon Lee, violin; Seth Van Embden, viola
Justin Park, cello
* TCO member
+ NWS alumnus
Michael Linville is the New World Symphony’s Dean of Instrumental Performance.
Albert Roussel
Divertissement for Piano and Winds, Op. 6
(1906)
Approximate duration: 7 minutes
While most composers begin their musical training as children, Albert Roussel did not formally study music until he was an adult. Roussel served as a midshipman in the French Navy for seven years, before resigning his position to study composition in 1894. During World War I, Roussel returned to military service, working as an ambulance driver on the Western Front. After the war, he devoted the remainder of his career to composing and teaching.
Roussel’s compositional style fuses classical conventions from the time of Mozart with 20th-century idioms such as impressionism and jazz. Divertissements are typically lighthearted chamber works, and Roussel’s 1906 Divertissement is considered one of his finest early pieces. It is divided into four sections and features driving rhythms, prominent dissonances and distinctive melodies. The jovial first section opens with lively rhythms that are layered on top of each other. A slow section with a haunting flute melody follows. The piece then returns to driving rhythms reminiscent of the first section and reaches a dramatic climax. Dreamy, atmospheric sounds taper away at the conclusion of the piece.
Dorothy Hindman
Untitled I for flute/bass flute, violin, percussion and piano
(2019)
Approximate duration: 12 minutes
Miami-based composer Dorothy Hindman’s music “weds the technique and syntax of classical music with the directness and impudence of rock” (ICON Magazine). A former synth player in a rock band, Hindman puts timbre at the forefront of her compositional process. She creates complex structures in her pieces by weaving together simple musical ideas and juxtaposing them with distorted versions of the originals. Hindman also seeks to convey emotional depth in her pieces. She writes: “My music is provocative, but also engaging, memorable and ultimately meant to affect positive change.”
Untitled I was composed for [Switch~Ensemble] in 2019 and is the first piece in Shadow of My Former Self, a series exploring how we might reconcile who we are now with what we have learned from our past. In Untitled I, Hindman use spectral manipulation and reverb to digitally process and transform a recording of a past work. She then superposed the original recording onto the processed recording to “erase” the memory of what once was. Finally, she created a new piece from what remained, which she describes as “a musical shadow of the troubled past that defines me, and that I carry with me in the present, that others do not see.”
Lili Boulanger
D’un soir triste for Violin, Cello and Piano
(1917-18)
Approximate duration: 10 minutes
In 1913 the French composer Lili Boulanger became the first woman to win the prestigious Prix de Rome composition prize. A child prodigy, she began studying music theory and organ as a young girl at the Paris Conservatory. Lili wrote a number of influential compositions that her older sister Nadia continued to promote and perform for decades after Lili’s tragic death.
Lili continued to compose until the end of her brief life, eventually dictating works to Nadia when she became too ill to write them down herself. D’un soir triste (Of a sad evening) is one of the last works Lili was able to write out in her own hand. The piece was conceived in three different versions for instrumental duo, trio and orchestra. The trio version you will hear today was premiered in 1919 at the Société Nationale de Musique.
Boulanger’s music was influenced by the symbolist literary movement; her works often convey obscurity, indirection, loneliness and despair. The slow-moving harmonic progressions in D’un soir triste are mournful and dirge-like. Boulanger’s use of the Phrygian mode results in dark harmonies, which, when paired with low pedal points and ostinatos (repeated rhythmic patterns), create a foreboding sense of death and finality.
Witold Lutosławski
Dance Preludes for Nine Winds and Strings
(1954)
Approximate duration: 10 minutes
Polish composer and conductor Witold Lutosławski’s musical career was tremendously impacted by the mid-20th-century political climate of Eastern Europe. The scores to all but one of his early compositions were lost during the 1944 German destruction of Warsaw. As classical music once again began to flourish in Poland after the War, Lutosławski composed symphonies and other instrumental works.
The new Communist regime, however, quickly deemed Lutosławski’s music as too “formalist” and elite. Under the government’s doctrine of socialist realism, all new classical music was required to be immediately accessible to audiences. Lutosławski and many of his colleagues found these restrictions to be oppressive, although they managed to continue composing in ways that did not entirely compromise their principles. The Dance Preludes date to the end of this period in Lutosławski’s career, and he called the piece “My farewell to folklore for an indefinite period.”
Originally composed in 1954 for piano and clarinet, the Dance Preludes remain one of Lutosławski’s most famous works. The larger chamber version on today’s program was arranged by the composer in 1959 for the famed Czech Nonet. Although there are no direct quotations of Polish folk songs in the Dance Preludes, each of the five movements is based on the melodic and rhythmic principles of Polish folk dances.
The entire work features frequent tempo and meter changes. The first movement is a jaunty, detached dance that alternates between duple and triple meters, while a calm, lilting slower movement follows. The third movement is scherzo-like, with accented dissonances, jagged melodies and metric fluctuations. Quiet pizzicato (plucked strings) sound in the opening of the nostalgic fourth movement. The heavily accented fifth movement is the most rhythmically complex and alternates between meters of two, three, four, five and six beats per measure.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Quartet No. 1 in G minor for Piano and Strings, K. 478
(1785)
Approximate duration: 27 minutes
In 1785 the music publisher Franz Anton Hoffmeister commissioned Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to compose three pieces for piano quartet. After receiving the score for Mozart’s Piano Quartet No. 1, however, Hoffmeister determined that the work was too difficult, and he released Mozart from the contract. The piano quartet was a relatively new genre that mixed the virtuosity and drama of the piano concerto with the intimate dialogue of chamber music. Indeed, when Mozart wrote Piano Quartet No. 1, he had just finished publishing a set of string quartets and was in the midst of his extraordinary run of composing and performing 12 piano concertos.
Mozart was an exceedingly popular composer and pianist in the 1780s, and many endeavored to perform his new piano quartet. These musicians reportedly experienced wildly varying levels of success in their renditions of the piece. A June 1788 article in a Weimar-based periodical, for example, indicated that the piece “can, in truth, hardly be listened to when it falls into the hands of mediocre dilettantes and is negligently performed.” The article goes on to say, however, that “What a difference when this much-advertised work of art is performed with greatest precision by four skilled musicians who have studied it well!”
Mozart’s Piano Quartet No. 1 is in three movements, the first of which is incredibly progressive in its formal structure. Mozart used the key of G minor for some of his most turbulent pieces, and this harmonically unstable opening movement is no exception. The gentle and pensive second movement begins with a solo piano statement of the theme. In the cheerful rondo that concludes the piece, the initial thematic material regularly alternates with contrasting themes.
– © Dr. Paula Maust
Dr. Paula Maust is an Assistant Professor of Music Theory at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University and the creator of Expanding the Music Theory Canon, an extensive online collection of music theory examples by historical women and/or people of color. A book based on the website is forthcoming from SUNY Press, and she has also published articles in Women & Music and The Journal of the International Alliance for Women in Music. As a harpsichordist and organist, Paula conducts baroque opera from the keyboard, most recently directing a program of opera scenes by early modern women at Peabody.
Albert Roussel
(1869-1937)
Approx. Duration: 7 minutes
Divertissement for Piano and Winds, Op. 6 (1906)
Orion Weiss, piano
Jessica Sindell*, flute; Thomas Friedle, oboe
Robert Woolfrey*+, clarinet; Maggie O’Leary, bassoon
Nathaniel Silberschlag*, horn
Dorothy Hindman
(b. 1966)
Approx. Duration: 12 minutes
Untitled I for flute/bass flute, violin, percussion and piano (2019)
Allison DeFrancesco, flute/bass flute; Jessica Lee*, violin
Marc Damoulakis*+, percussion; Wesley Ducote, piano
Lili Boulanger
(1893-1918)
Approx. Duration: 10 minutes
D’un soir triste for Violin, Cello and Piano (1917-18)
Beatrice Hsieh, violin; Justin Park, cello
Orion Weiss, piano
Intermission
Witold Lutosławski
(1913-1994)
Approx. Duration: 10 minutes
Dance Preludes for Nine Winds and Strings (1954)
Allegro molto
Andantino
Allegro giocoso
Andante
Allegro molto
Jessica Sindell*, flute; Thomas Friedle, oboe
Robert Woolfrey*+, clarinet; Maggie O’Leary, bassoon
Nathaniel Silberschlag*, horn
Jessica Lee*, violin; Carolyn Farnand, viola
Mark Kosower*, cello; Logan May, bass
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
(1756-1791)
Approx. Duration: 27 minutes
Quartet No. 1 in G minor for Piano and Strings, K. 478 (1785)
Allegro
Andante
Rondo
Orion Weiss, piano
Ka-Yeon Lee, violin; Seth Van Embden, viola
Justin Park, cello
* TCO member
+ NWS alumnus
Michael Linville is the New World Symphony’s Dean of Instrumental Performance.
Albert Roussel
Divertissement for Piano and Winds, Op. 6 (1906)
Duración aproximada: 7 minutos
Mientras la mayor parte de los compositores comienzan sus estudios musicales desde la niñez, Albert Roussel no estudió música formalmente hasta que fue un adulto. Roussel sirvió como guardiamarina en la Marina Francesa durante siete años, antes de renunciar a sus estudios de composición en 1894. Durante la Primera Guerra Mundial, Roussel regresó al servicio militar, trabajando como chofer de ambulancia en el Frente Occidental. Después de la guerra, dedicó el resto de su carrera a componer y enseñar.
El estilo composicional de Roussel fusiona las tradiciones clásicas de la época de Mozart con estilos del siglo XX como el impresionismo y el jazz. Divertissements son obras de cámara típicamente ligeras y alegres, y el Divertimento de Roussel de 1906 es considerado una de sus mejores obras tempranas. Está dividido en cuatro secciones y presenta ritmos enérgicos, disonancias prominentes y melodías distintivas. La jovial sección inicial abre con ritmos animados que se superponen. Le sigue una sección lenta con una melodía inquietante de la flauta. La pieza luego retorna a sus ritmos energéticos que evocan la primera sección y alcanzan dramáticamente el clímax de la obra. Sonidos atmosféricos y de ensueño van disminuyendo poco a poco hacia el final de la pieza.
Dorothy Hindman
Untitled I for flute/bass flute, violin, percussion and piano (2019)
Duración aproximada: 12 minutos
La música de la compositora radicada en Miami Dorothy Hindman “une la técnica y la sintaxis de la música clásica con la sinceridad y la insolencia del rock” (Revista ICON). Hindman, que anteriormente tocaba sintetizadores en una banda de rock, pone el timbre al frente de su proceso composicional. Ella crea estructuras complejas en sus piezas entretejiendo ideas musicales simples y yuxtaponiéndolas con versiones distorsionadas de los originales. Hindman también busca transmitir profundidad emocional en sus piezas. Ella escribe: “Mi música es provocativa, pero también interesante, memorable, y busca, en última instancia, producir un cambio positivo”.
Untitled I (Sin título I) fue compuesta para el [Switch~Ensemble] en 2019 y es la primera pieza de Shadow of My Former Self (Sombra de mi ser anterior), una serie que explora cómo reconciliamos quienes somos hoy con lo que hemos aprendido del pasado. En Untitled I, Hindman usa la manipulación espectral y la reverberación para procesar y transformar digitalmente una grabación de una obra del pasado. Ella después superpuso la grabación original a la grabación procesada para “borrar” la memoria de lo que un día fue. Finalmente, creó una nueza pieza de lo que quedó, lo cual describe como “una sombra musical del pasado turbulento que me define, y que llevo conmigo en el presente, que otros no pueden ver.”
Lili Boulanger
D’un soir triste for Violin, Cello and Piano (1917-18)
Duración aproximada: 10 minutos
En 1913, la compositora francesa Lili Boulanger se convirtió en la primera mujer en ganar el prestigioso premio de composición Prix de Rome. Una niña prodigio, comenzó sus estudios de teoría de la música y órgano desde pequeña en el Conservatorio de París. Lili escribió un gran número de composiciones influyentes que su hermana mayor, Nadia, continuó promoviendo e interpretando por décadas después la trágica muerte de Lili.
Lili continuó componiendo hasta el final de su corta vida, eventualmente dictando obras a Nadia cuando se encontraba muy enferma para escribirlas ella misma. D’un soir triste (Of a sad evening) es una de las últimas obras que Lili pudo escribir de su propia mano. La pieza fue concebida en tres versiones diferentes, para dúo instrumental, trío y orquesta. La versión a trío que escucharán hoy, fue estrenada en 1919 en la Société Nationale de Musique.
La música de Boulanger estuvo influenciada por el movimiento del simbolismo literario; sus obras a menudo transmiten oscuridad, indirección, soledad y desesperación. Las progresiones armónicas lentas en D’un soir triste son lúgubres y fúnebres. El uso de Boulanger del modo frigio resultó en armonías oscuras, las cuales, cuando van en conjunto con puntos de pedal bajo y ostinatos (patrones rítmicos repetitivos), crean una fatídica sensación de finalidad y muerte.
Witold Lutosławski
Dance Preludes for Nine Winds and Strings (1954)
Duración aproximada: 10 minutos
La carrera musical del compositor y director de orquesta polaco Witold Lutoslawski se vió afectada grandemente por el clima político de Europa del Este a mediados del siglo XX. Las partituras de todas menos una de sus primeras obras se perdieron durante la destrucción alemana de Varsovia en 1944. Cuando la música clásica volvió a renacer en Polonia, después de la guerra, Lutoslawski compuso sinfonías y otras obras instrumentales.
Sin embargo, el nuevo régimen comunista pronto catalogó su música de muy “formalista” y elitista. Bajo la doctrina del realismo socialista, se requería que toda la música clásica nueva fuera inmediatamente accesible para el público. Lutoslawski y muchos de sus colegas encontraron que estas restricciones eran represivas, aunque lograron continuar componiendo en formas que no comprometían por completo sus principios. Los Preludios de Danza datan del final de este período en la carrera de Lutoslawski, y llamó la pieza “mi despedida del folclore por un período indefinido”.
Compuestos originalmente en 1954 para piano y clarinete, los Preludios de Danza siguen siento una de sus obras más famosas. La versión de cámara en el programa de hoy fue arreglada por el compositor en 1959 para el famoso Nonet checo. Aunque no hay citas directas de canciones folclóricas polacas en los Preludios de Danza, cada uno de los cinco movimientos está basado en los principios melódicos y rítmicos de las danzas folclóricas polacas.
La obra completa presenta frecuentes cambios de tempo y métrica. El primer movimiento es una danza alegre e independiente que alterna entre compases dobles y triples, mientras que le sigue un movimiento tranquilo y melodioso. El tercer movimiento parece un scherzo, con disonancias acentuadas, melodías irregulares y fluctuaciones métricas. El sonido silencioso del pizzicato (cuerdas pulsadas) se escucha al comienzo del nostálgico cuarto movimiento. El quinto movimiento, fuertemente acentuado, es el más complejo rítmicamente y alterna entre compases de dos, tres, cuatro, cinco y seis tiempos por compás.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Quartet No. 1 in G minor for Piano and Strings, K. 478 (1785)
Duración aproximada: 15 minutos
En 1785, el editor musical Franz Anton Hoffmeister encargó a Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart componer tres piezas para cuarteto de piano. Sin embargo, después de recibir la partitura del Cuarteto No. 1 para piano de Mozart, Hoffmeister determinó que la obra era muy difícil técnicamente, y liberó a Mozart de su contrato. El cuarteto de piano era un género relativamente nuevo que mezclaba el virtuosismo y el drama del concierto para piano con el diálogo íntimo de la música de cámara. En efecto, cuando Mozart escribió el Cuarteto para Piano No. 1, había acabado de publicar un grupo de cuartetos de cuerdas y estaba en medio de su extraordinaria racha de composición e interpretación de 12 conciertos para piano.
Mozart era un compositor y pianista extremadamente popular en los 1780, y muchos se esforzaron por tocar su nuevo cuarteto de piano. Estos músicos experimentaron niveles de éxito muy variados en sus interpretaciones de la pieza. Un artículo publicado en un periódico de Weimar en junio de 1788, por ejemplo, indicaba que la pieza “puede, en verdad, resultar muy difícil de escuchar cuando cae en manos de mediocres diletantes y es interpretada negligentemente”. El artículo continúa diciendo que, sin embargo, “!Hay una gran diferencia cuando la tan publicitada obra de arte es interpretada con la mayor precisión por cuatro talentosos músicos que la han estudiado bien!”
El Cuarteto para Piano No. 1 tiene tres movimientos, el primero de los cuales es increíblemente progresivo en su estructura formal. Mozart utilizó la tonalidad de Sol menor para algunas de sus obras más turbulentas, y este comienzo inestable armónicamente no es la excepción. El cuidadoso y meditativo segundo movimiento empieza con una presentación del tema a piano solo. En el alegre Rondó que concluye la pieza, el material temático inicial alterna regularmente con temas contrastantes.
– © Dr. Paula Maust
Dr. Paula Maust es Profesora Asistente de Teoría Musical en el Instituto Peabody de la Universidad John Hopkins y creadora del sitio web Expanding the Music Theory Canon, una extensa colección de ejemplos de teoría musical escritos por mujeres históricas y/o personas de color. Un libro basado en el sitio web será publicado próximamente por SUNY Press, y también ha publicado artículos en Women & Music y The Journal of the International Alliance for Women in Music. Como clavecinista y organista dirige ópera barroca desde el teclado, y más recientemente dirigió un programa de escenas de ópera de mujeres modernas en Peabody.
Translation by Maria Paulina García
Orion Weiss, piano

One of the most sought-after soloists and chamber music collaborators of his generation, Orion Weiss is widely regarded as a “brilliant pianist” (The New York Times) with “powerful technique and exceptional insight” (The Washington Post). He has dazzled audiences with his lush sound and performed with dozens of orchestras in North America, including the Chicago Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, Boston Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic and at major venues and festivals worldwide.
Known for his affinity for chamber music, Mr. Weiss performs regularly with violinists Augustin Hadelich, William Hagen, Benjamin Beilman and James Ehnes; pianists Michael Brown and Shai Wosner; cellist Julie Albers; and the Ariel, Parker and Pacifica quartets. In recent seasons, he has also performed with the Israel Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, National Arts Centre Orchestra and Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. Mr. Weiss can be heard on the Naxos, Telos, Bridge, First Hand, Yarlung and Artek labels.
Mr. Weiss has been awarded the Classical Recording Foundation’s Young Artist of the Year, Gilmore Young Artist Award, an Avery Fisher Career Grant and the Mieczyslaw Munz Scholarship. A native of Ohio, he attended the Cleveland Institute of Music and The Juilliard School, where he studied with Emanuel Ax. Learn more www.orionweiss.com.
Musicians of the New World Symphony

A laboratory for the way music is taught, presented and experienced, the New World Symphony consists of 87 young musicians who are granted fellowships lasting up to three years. The fellowship program offers in-depth exposure to traditional and modern repertoire, professional development training and personalized experiences working with leading guest conductors, soloists and visiting faculty.
NWS Fellows take advantage of the innovative performance facilities and state-of-the art practice and ensemble rooms of the Frank Gehry-designed New World Center, the campus of the New World Symphony and home of the Knight New Media Center.
In the hopes of joining NWS, nearly 1,000 recent music school and conservatory graduates compete for available fellowships each year. The Fellows are selected for this highly competitive, prestigious opportunity based on their musical achievement and promise, as well as their passion for the future of classical music.
Musicians of The Cleveland Orchestra

The Cleveland Orchestra is today hailed as one of the very best orchestras on the planet, noted for its musical excellence and for its devotion and service to the community it calls home.
The 100-plus members of The Cleveland Orchestra perform together year round, at the group’s home at Severance, its summer home at Blossom Music Center, on tours in the United States and around the world, and at residencies such as Miami and Vienna. They make their homes in communities across the Cleveland metropolitan area, raising children and pursuing a range of hobbies and interests beyond their musical professions.