We played our matinee concert in Astoria on Sunday the 8th, and it was, like last year, a great success. The audience was at least a third larger than last year (with extra seating needing to be added), and just as enthusiastic. We love playing in Astoria, and are excited to return again next season! Many thanks to Marge Bloomfield, Thron Riggs, Betsey Ellerbroek, Brenda Penner, and Steve Forrester for their dedication to presenting great chamber music in Astoria! We can’t wait for next season’s concert!

If you’d like a head start on our January 8th concert at the Liberty Theater’s McTavish Room, click the link below to download a pdf file (Adobe Reader required to open file). You can order tickets online here.

Download concert notes here.
[PC - right-click on link and Save As... | Mac - control-click on link and Save As...]

The quartet is in the rehearsal process for our semi-regular Astoria appearance, and it’s going to be a wonderful program. The Mozart and Dvorak are well-known gems of the repertoire, while the young Benjamin Britten’s first string quartet will be a delightful surprise to many, even veterans, chamber music aficionados. It’s a concert that you won’t want to miss!

The Liberty Theater is presenting our concert this year, and an added advantage of this is that online ticketing is now available!

Ticketing is through TicketsWest, and you can go directly to our concert’s ticket purchase page by clicking here (will open a new browser window).

We had a great concert last night with all that that implies: great music, great musicians, and a great audience. Thanks for making our concert such an event. We hope to see you at one of our upcoming conerts – like our January 8, 2012 concert in Astoria, Oregon!

Upon opening the score or parts to the Britten String Quartet No. 1, one straight away notices the extremely high tessitura of the two violins and viola. It takes one’s breath away, especially as a performer, to be faced with that right off the bat – it takes a specific type of fine control to get the sound just right at these high pitch levels. The string is so short that the slightest miscalculation can make the sound break or squawk, and Britten asks for molto vibrato, which makes it hard to center the pitch as well. It really is a high wire act, but the effect is stunning and otherworldly when pulled off by a good quartet. It will be our final work on our Sept. 30th concert at the Community Music Center. We hope to see you there – get your tickets while they last!

Information available here.

Opening page of Britten's First String Quartet, op. 25 - Boosey & Hawkes

Parallels: Music of Daniel Ott & Benjamin Britten

Friday, September 30, 2011 @ 8:00 p.m.
Community Music Center, Portland, Oregon

Admission: $20/adults; $10 students w/ID and seniors | $40 for concert admission plus an exclusive post-concert reception at Hopworks Urban Brewpub with the performers and composer Daniel Ott.
Tickets available through the Oregon Symphony box office:
503-228-1353 or 1-800-228-7343
923 SW Washington, Portland, Oregon 97205
Box office hours: Monday – Friday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
When you call, ask for ‘Parallels’ tickets to get the correct concert!

Tickets will also be available at the door one hour before the performance time, cash or check only. No reception tickets available day of show.

Join us in the intimate space of the Community Music Center’s Recital Hall for an exploration of the parallels between two composers in the ascendancy of their careers: the wonderful young American composer Daniel Ott, and the great British composer Benjamin Britten.

We will perform works of both composers, with an eye toward highlighting both their similarities and differences, through three distinct repertoire categories upon which each has made their unique mark at the beginning stages of their careers: viola & piano, oboe & string trio, and string quartet.

The Arnica Quartet will be joined by pianist Susan Dewitt Smith, oboist Erin Gustafson, and the composer Daniel Ott.

Dr. Ott will be presenting a pre-concert talk with the performers in the recital hall at 7:30 p.m. Free to all ticket holders.

Program:

• Daniel Ott – Refracted Fragments for viola and piano (2008)
• Benjamin Britten – Phantasy for oboe and string trio, Op. 2 (1932)
• Daniel Ott – String Quartet No. 1 (1998)
• Benjamin Britten – Lachrymae for viola and piano, Op. 48 (1950)
• Daniel Ott – Camera Obscura for oboe and string trio (2007)
• Benjamin Britten – String Quartet No. 1 in D major, Op. 25 (1941)

Daniel Ott, composer

Composer Daniel Ott’s music has been described as “haunting” (The News Tribune),
“compelling” (Dance Magazine), and “of considerable artistic seriousness” (MusicWeb International). His work has been heard all over the world, most notably at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, Sadler’s Wells, the Musée du Louvre, the Guggenheim Museum, and at the Fall for Dance Festival in New York’s City Center. Recent commissions have come from the National Symphony, New York City Ballet, the Chiara

Daniel Ott - Photo: Charles Noble

Quartet, and Bargemusic, among others.

Noted for his work for dance, Ott has composed a number of ballet scores, most recently for the New York City Ballet Choreographic Institute’s 10th Anniversary at Miller Theatre in New York. In a unique experiment, the resulting work, An Inflorescence, was set to dance by three of the world’s leading choreographers – Larry Kiegwin, Alexei Ratmansky, and Christopher Wheeldon – and performed three times in one evening. Ott has also been a frequent collaborator with Benjamin Millepied, from whom he has received a number of commissions. Their Double Aria was described as the “highlight of the night” (The New York Times) at its NYCB premiere.

Other recent projects have included the premiere of Ott’s String Quartet No. 2 by the Chiara Quartet, as part of their innovative Creator/Curator commissioning series, in which the composer selects the other works to appear alongside his music. Ott’s Blue Water, a chamber concerto for violin, piano, and string quartet, whose music “weaves together images of magnificence and terror” (The New York Times), was commissioned for Bargemusic’s 30th Anniversary and premiered by the Shanghai Quartet and guests.

Benjamin Britten, composer

Photo: © Oxford University Press

(Edward) Benjamin Britten was born, by happy coincidence, on St. Cecilia’s Day, at the family home in Lowestoft, Suffolk, England. His father was a dentist. He was the youngest of four children, with a brother, Robert (1907), and two sisters, Barbara (1902) and Beth (1909). He was educated locally, and studied, first, piano, and then, later, viola, from private teachers.

He began to compose as early as 1919, and after about 1922, composed steadily until his death. At a concert in 1927, conducted by composer Frank Bridge, he met Bridge, later showed him several of his compositions, and ultimately Bridge took him on as a private pupil. After two years at Gresham’s School in Holt, Norfolk, he entered the Royal College of Music in London (1930) where he studied composition with John Ireland and piano with Arthur Benjamin. During his stay at the RCM he won several prizes for his compositions.

He completed a choral work, A Boy was Born, in 1933; at a rehearsal for a broadcast performance of the work by the BBC Singers, he met tenor Peter Pears, the beginning of a lifelong personal and professional relationship. (Many of Britten’s solo songs, choral and operatic works feature the tenor voice, and Pears was the designated soloist at many of their premieres.)

From about 1935 until the beginning of World War II, Britten did a great deal of composing for the GPO Film Unit, for BBC Radio, and for small, usually left-wing, theater groups in London. During this period he met and worked frequently with the poet W. H. Auden who provided texts for numerous songs as well as complete scripts for which Britten provided incidental music.

In the spring of 1939, Britten and Pears sailed for North America, eventually settling in Amityville, Long Island, NY, where they lived with Dr. and Mrs. Wm. Mayer and their family. In 1940 he worked with Auden on what would become his first opera, actually an operetta for high schools called Paul Bunyan, based on traditional American folk characters. However, on a trip to California in 1941, he read an article by E. M. Forster on the English poet George Crabbe, planting the seed for what would eventually be Britten’s first opera, Peter Grimes. In 1942, Serge Koussevitzky became interested in Britten’s music and performed the Sinfonia da Requiem with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Out of this association came the commission from the Koussevitzky Foundation (in memory of Koussevitzky’s late wife Natalie) for the new opera, based on Crabbe’s work The Borough. Britten and Pears worked on the scenario during their return voyage to England in March, 1942.

During the early 40s, Britten produced a number of works, outstanding among them the Hymn to St. Cecilia, A Ceremony of Carols, Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo, Serenade (for tenor, horn, and strings), Rejoice in the Lamb, and the Festival Te Deum. Peter Grimes, with a libretto by Montagu Slater, was complete in 1945 and had its premiere on June 7 of that year by the Sadler’s Wells Opera Company. (Slightly over a year later, the work had its American premiere at the Boston Symphony’s summer home at Tanglewood, under the baton of Leonard Bernstein.)

Other operas appeared regularly in the ensuing years: The Rape of Lucretia (1946), Albert Herring (1947), The Little Sweep (1949), Billy Budd (1951) Gloriana (1953), The Turn of the Screw (1954), Noye’s Fludde ((1957), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1960) Curlew River (1964), The Burning Fiery Furnace (1966), The Prodigal Son (1968) Owen Wingrave (1970) [for television], and finally Death in Venice (1973).

Courtesy of opera.stanford.edu.

There will be abundant information coming in the next week or so about our upcoming Parallels: Music of Daniel Ott & Benjamin Britten concert, but I just wanted to share with you our completed performer line up for the Sept. 30th concert.

Charles Noble, viola
Susan DeWitt Smith, piano
Erin Gustafson, oboe
Arnica String Quartet

More news, coming soon….

Last weekend, right about now, the quartet was finishing up our first concert (in White Salmon, Washington) at the new Gorge Music Festival. We had a great time. First of all, we had the privilege of getting to know the wonderful pair of pianists Ron Potts and Karen Eddleman, as we rehearsed and stayed in their lovely Mosier, Oregon home above the Columbia River Gorge.

It’s always an adventure, collaborating with a new musician, especially one whom you don’t know at all before the music-making begins. But we were in good hands with Karen, who is full of energy, a wonderfully musical player, and has a great sense of humor, which is essential for all of us fun-lovers in the quartet!

We look forward to future collaborations, and enjoyed our time in the gorge very much – we can’t wait for next year!

In the meantime, this brand new festival will continue with two further weekends of concerts – August 4th and 5th will present Karen Eddleman and Ron Potts in two concerts of duo piano repertoire. The following weekend (August 12th and 13th) the festival presents the group Al Andalus, which will perform contemporary flamenco dance with live vocal and instrumental music.

You can find complete information here.

I’ll write up a summary of our weekend in the Columbia River Gorge shortly, but for now, here are some photos of the rehearsal period and the weekend itself. Enjoy!