Wednesday, February 2, 2022
7:30 PM
In 1890 Brahms retired from composing, but, after hearing the clarinetist Richard Mühlfeld, was inspired to write clarinet music. His Clarinet Quintet (1891) breathed new life into a neglected medium. Four years later the 20-year-old Black British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor wrote his Clarinet Quintet which combined the formal concern of Brahms with the rhythmic and harmonic influence of Dvorak. Rising clarinet star Max Opferkuch will perform with the Zelter String Quartet, winner of the 2021 Chesapeake Music International Chamber Music Competition.
Program
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
Quintet for Clarinet and Strings in B minor, Op. 115 (1891)
Allegro
Adagio
Andantino; Presto non assai, ma con sentiment
Con moto
—Intermission—
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875 –1912)
Clarinet Quintet in F# minor. Op. 10 (1895)
Allegro energico
Larghetto affettuoso
Scherzo: Allegro leggiero
Allego agitato; Un poco più moderato; Vivace
Bios
Max Opferkuch, clarinet
Max Opferkuch is a clarinetist based in the Los Angeles area. Max was awarded First Place in the 2019 USC Thornton Concerto Competition and was also the Grand Prize winner of the 33rd Annual Pasadena Showcase House Competition and the 2015 San Diego Clarinet Society Competition. In 2019 Opferkuch appeared as a soloist with the Thornton Symphony in Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto, performing the work on basset clarinet, and in February 2020 he was featured as a Young Artist in Residence for Minnesota Public Radio’s nationally syndicated show Performance Today, recording a studio session of solo performances and interviews.
As a freelance clarinetist and bass clarinetist, Max has made appearances with The Cleveland Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Pacific Symphony, the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, and the Mainly Mozart Festival. Max participated in the 2018 Crusell Week festival in Uusikaupunki, Finland, as well as the 2021 season of Music from Angel Fire in New Mexico. Max was a Clarinet Fellow at the 2019 Tanglewood Music Center, where he will return for the 2022 season.
Originally from Encinitas, California, Max received his Bachelor of Music degree from the USC Thornton School of Music, where he was a student of renowned pedagogue Yehuda Gilad and former Los Angeles Philharmonic principal clarinetist Michele Zukovsky. He also spent a semester abroad at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, Finland, where he studied with clarinetists Harri Mäki and Olli Leppäniemi. Prior to his collegiate studies, Max studied with San Diego Symphony clarinetist Theresa Tunnicliff. Max is currently pursuing his master’s degree at the Colburn Conservatory of Music in Los Angeles, where he continues to study with Yehuda Gilad.
Zelter String Quartet
Gallia Kastner, violin
Kyle Gilner, violin
Katie Liu, viola
Allan Hon, cello
Praised by LA Opus for their “seemingly effortless precision and blend” and the Lerman Gold Prize winner of the 2021 Chesapeake International Chamber Music Competition, the Zelter String Quartet was formed in Los Angeles in 2018. They have worked with several distinguished artists including Lina Bahn, Sacott St. John, Yura Lee, and Alasdair Tait, and have collaborated with the Verona String Quartet. In 2019, The Zelter String Quartet was awarded a full scholarship to participate in the St. Lawrence String Quartet Seminar, where they worked with members of the St. Lawrence and Danish String Quartets. They most recently participated in the Juilliard String Quartet Seminar; the Center for Advanced Quartet Studies at the Aspen Music Festival, where they worked with the Pacifica, Escher, and American String Quartets; and the Rencontres Franco-Américaines de Musique de Chambre, as winners of the USC Ofiesh Chamber Music Competition. According to journalist Steve Parks: “The quartet is named for Carl Friedrich Zelter, Felix Mendelssohn’s composition teacher and an early influence on his career” (Chestertown Spy, October 16, 2021).
Gallia Kastner, violin
A master’s degree candidate at Colburn Conservatory in Los Angeles, Gallia Kastner, is the American Youth Symphony concertmaster and has performed as a soloist with both the Chicago and Cleveland symphony orchestras. Gallia Kastner has been the concertmaster of the American Youth Symphony since 2016 and has won numerous local, national, and international competitions, both as a soloist and chamber musician. Kastner was a member of the Lumiére String Quartet that won first place at the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition and she was also the violinist of Trio Solaris, which collaborated with the Trey McIntyre Project at Jacob’s Pillow. Gallia’s broadcast performances include appearances on WFMT 98.7/Introductions, WTTW Channel 11, WGN Channel 9, and a Today Show appearance with Rachel Barton Pine.
Kyle Gilner, violin
Kyle Gilner holds degrees from both the USC Thornton School of Music and the Cleveland Institute of Music, where he studied with former Concertmaster of The Cleveland Orchestra, William Preucil. He also studied in master classes led by the Schubert Ensemble of London. Because of his passion for ensemble-based performing, Gilner is a member of Delirium Musicum, a conductorless string orchestra that presents classical standard repertoire reimagined for string orchestra as well as works by living contemporary composers. He performs for the Santa Barbara Symphony as a rotating section violinist and is a part of two string quartets, the Zelter String Quartet and the Cordial String Quartet. He currently plays a 2010 copy of a Tommaso Balestrieri violin made by Los Angeles based luthier Eric Benning.
Katie Liu, viola
Katie Liu is a Master of Music candidate at The Colburn School in the studio of Paul Coletti. She received her undergraduate degree from Princeton University. She is an alumna of The Juilliard School Pre-College Division 2016, where she studied with Masao Kawasaki. Liu made her solo viola debut in 2019 with the Princeton University Orchestra as a winner of the Princeton University Concerto Competition and toured with Swedish pianist Per Tengstrand in 2019. In her time at Princeton, she performed with the Richardson Chamber Players and the New York Piano Society as a guest artist and has held principal positions on both instruments in the Princeton University Orchestra. She studied with Eric Wyrick on both violin and viola and was an active member of Opus, the campus chamber group. She is currently Principal Violist of the American Youth Symphony for its upcoming seasons.
Allan Hon, cello
Allan Hon earned his bachelor’s degree from Rice University in Texas, his master’s from Yale, and a doctorate in musical arts from the USC Thornton School of Music. A multiple competition prizewinner as a soloist, he has performed extensively in Europe and Asia as well as in North America.
Program Notes
Johannes Brahms
Born May 7, 1833, Hamburg, Germany; died April 3, 1897, Vienna, Austria
Quintet for Clarinet and Strings in B Minor, Op. 115 (1891)
In 1890, at the age of 57, Johannes Brahms declared his intent to retire from composition. This retirement would prove to be short-lived. A performance Brahms attended of Mozart’s clarinet quintet, featuring clarinetist Richard Mühlfeld, sparked a friendship between composer and clarinetist, and inspired Brahms to compose some of his finest late chamber works: the Op. 114 trio for clarinet, cello, and piano; the Op. 115 quintet for clarinet and strings; and the two Op. 121 sonatas for clarinet and piano, which are among Brahms’s final published pieces.
Often described as autumnal and nostalgic, the Op. 115 quintet is one of Brahms’s most incredible chamber works and is a highlight of the clarinet repertoire as a whole. The first movement opens with a theme in the violins that returns in different forms throughout the work as a whole; vague tonality that suggests D major gives way to the quintet’s home key, a more solemn B minor. The second movement is a beautiful Adagio in B major. A clarinet cadenza beginning with the first movement theme leads into a brilliant, rhapsodic middle section suggestive of Hungarian music. A shorter, intermezzo-like third movement leads into the final movement, a theme and variations, inspired by the similar final movement in Mozart’s quintet. The final variation segues into a haunting return of the first movement, which closes the work.
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor
Born August 15, 1875, Holborn, United Kingdom; died September 1, 1912, Croydon, United Kingdom
Clarinet Quintet in F-sharp Minor, Op.10
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was a British composer and conductor. Coleridge-Taylor was of African descent via his father, who hailed from Sierra Leone and who was descended from African American slaves freed by the British at the end of the American Revolutionary War. Despite achieving incredible musical success as a conductor and composer both in London and in the United States, Coleridge-Taylor died young of pneumonia while under financial distress, and his works were largely neglected until recent years.
Not long after Brahms wrote his quintet in 1891, the work was given its London premiere at the Royal College of Music, where Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was a student of composition at the time. Coleridge-Taylor and his composition professor Charles Villiers Stanford, another notable British composer, were both in attendance. Afterward, Stanford remarked that no composer would ever again be able to write a clarinet quintet without escaping the influence of Brahms.
Coleridge-Taylor took this comment as a direct challenge and set immediately to writing his own Quintet in F sharp minor. Some basic musical elements Coleridge-Taylor seems to draw from Brahms’s quintet—the choice of clarinet pitched in A, the minor home key (closely related to the B minor of Brahms’s quintet; indeed, the second movements of both works are in B major), the six-beat meter of the first movements of both works. But stylistically, Coleridge-Taylor’s quintet is distinctly his own, and his artistic voice shines through his writing. The quintet stands apart as a brilliant and mature chamber work—certainly not the work of a student composer—and one which decisively disproves Stanford’s comment.
As opposed to the drawn-out, lyrical German romanticism of Brahms’s quintet, Coleridge-Taylor’s quintet is energetic, rhythmic, and at times folk-music-like, seemingly drawing influence from another of his musical inspirations, Czech composer Antonín Dvořak. The first movement contrasts a punchy, syncopated first theme with a more lyrical, modal second theme. The hymnlike second movement is the emotional centerpiece of the work; the third movement, a scherzo, is interrupted by a songlike middle section that also calls to mind a folk tune. The Finale is an exciting Allegro agitato, with a theme based on that of the first movement. Just as the music reaches a climax, it is interrupted by a sudden return of the second movement, then just as quickly launches into a final galloping conclusion, closing in a brilliant F-sharp major.
Coleridge-Taylor’s clarinet quintet is one among many pieces by composers of African descent that have been unjustly ignored over the years. We hope that by performing this incredible work it may begin to receive the recognition it deserves, as a clarinet quintet on par with the standard repertoire by the likes of Brahms and Mozart.
The concerts will be in person at the Athenaeum Music & Arts Library. There are no physical tickets for these events. Your name will be on an attendee list at the front door. Doors open at 7 p.m. Seating is first-come; first-served. These events will be presented in compliance with State of California and County of San Diego health regulations as applicable at the time of each concert. Face coverings are required for attendees, regardless of vaccination status. Proof of vaccination or negative test within 48 hours of the event is required. Event capacity is limited to 70% for now.