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Join Us For Our 2024-2025 Season! |
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Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players “This was music-making of a very high order” Fred Kirshnit, The New York Sun |
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Why the name Jupiter: When Jens Nygaard named his orchestra Jupiter, he had the beautiful, gaseous planet in mind—unattainable but worth the effort, like reaching musical perfection. Many, indeed, were privileged and fortunate to hear his music making that was truly Out of This World. Our Players today seek to attain that stellar quality.
View Our Printable Calendar and Ticket Order Form (pdf) Take a look at our guest artists for this season. |
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Join us for our next concerts...
Monday, January 6 ♦ 2 PM & 7:30 PM Tickets: $25, $17, $10 ~ Reservations advised Drew Petersen piano William Hagen violin Franz Anton HOFFMEISTER Duo in F Major Op. 6 No. 2 Although Hoffmeister (1754–1812) had a flourishing publishing business, his passion was composing. He was madly prolific, writing 66 symphonies, 100 flute quartets, numerous quintets, and other pieces. As a composer he was highly respected by his contemporaries, and many of his Viennese works were popular in foreign cities. His most successful opera was performed in Budapest, Hamburg, Prague, Temesvár, Warsaw, and Weimar; his numerous chamber works were published in Amsterdam, London, Paris, Venice, and throughout the German-speaking regions. A tribute published in Gerber’s Neues Lexikon der Tonkünstler in the year of his death attests to Hoffmeister’s esteem: “If you were to take a glance at his many and varied works, then you would have to admire the diligence and the cleverness of this composer.... He earned for himself a well-deserved and widespread reputation through the original content of his works, which are not only rich in emotional expression but also distinguished by the interesting and suitable use of instruments and through good practicability. For this last trait we have to thank his knowledge of instruments, which is so evident that you might think that he was a virtuoso on all of the instruments for which he wrote.” Hoffmeister’s publishing business, established in 1784, was astute in its choice of composers. Its catalog included Albrechtsberger, Clementi, E.A. Förster, Pleyel, Vanhal, and Wranitzky (composers presented at Jupiter); as well as Beethoven, Haydn, and particularly Mozart (his personal friend). In 1795 Hoffmeister sold the firm, in part, to Artaria. Then he had a partnership with Ambrosius Kühnel of Leipzig under a new firm, the Bureau de Musique, which was later taken over by C. F. Peters, one of the oldest publishing houses still surviving today. Heinrich von HERZOGENBERG Piano Quintet in Eb Major Op. 43 Herzogenberg (1843–1900) was born in Graz, the son of an Austrian court official. He began studying philosophy and law in 1861 at the University of Vienna, then from 1862 to 1864 he studied composition with Felix Otto Dessoff, a professor at the Vienna Conservatory and conductor of the Vienna Philharmonic. It was at Dessoff’s house that Herzogenberg met Brahms, and the two formed a lifelong friendship. His wife Elisabeth, whom he married in 1868, was a pianist and close friend of Brahms as well; and the family met the Schumanns through Brahms. In 1872 Herzogenberg moved to Leipzig, where he founded the Bach Society two years later and served as its director for 10 years. In 1885 he was appointed professor of composition at the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin, where he also conducted a master class in composition from 1889. He taught until 1900, with lengthy absences caused by ill health and his wife’s death. Herzogenberg’s musical activities were influenced by the various movements and composers of the 19th century. Among them were Wagner in his orchestral works, Brahms in his chamber music, Schumann in his piano works and songs, and Bach in his church music. The influential musicologist Wilhelm Altmann described Herzogenberg as “a composer of great refinement. He in his way was an original thinker and a musician of genuine emotional and poetic qualities. His chamber compositions in particular stand out...for they are not only masterly from the technical point of view, but interesting intellectually.” Fritz KREISLER Caprice Viennois Op. 2 Born in Vienna in 1875, Kreisler began to learn the violin at age 4 with his father, a doctor and enthusiastic amateur violinist. At age 7 he was the youngest ever to enter the Vienna Conservatory, where he studied violin for 3 years with Joseph Hellmesberger and theory with Anton Bruckner. He won a gold medal at age 10, an unprecedented distinction. He then studied composition and violin at the Paris Conservatoire. After a successful concert tour in the United States in 1888–1889, he returned to Vienna to study medicine. He next studied art in Paris and Rome and served as an officer in the Austrian army. In 1899 he resumed concertizing and became one of the most successful virtuosos of his time. In 1910 Kreisler premiered Edward Elgar’s Violin Concerto (dedicated to him) with the London Symphony Orchestra and Elgar conducting; it was a triumph. After 1915 he lived mainly in the United States but continued to tour widely in Europe. In 1941 he was struck by a truck in New York City and nearly died from the injuries; although he recovered, his playing and hearing were never the same. He died in New York in 1962. As a violinist, Kreisler was unique. He played with a “tone of indescribable sweetness and expressiveness…. The matchless colour was achieved by [an intense] vibrato in the style of Wieniawski.… Kreisler applied vibrato not only on sustained notes but also in faster passages which lost all dryness under his magic touch. His methods of bowing and fingering were equally personal [New Grove Dictionary].” Kreisler was also a gifted composer, and wrote many pieces for the violin, string quartets, and the operetta “Apple Blossom.” And he was known as the “secret” composer of the Classical Manuscripts, published as his arrangements of works by the old masters, including Vivaldi and Couperin. When he admitted in 1935 that the pieces were a hoax, many critics were indignant while others accepted it as a joke. SCHUBERT Piano Trio in Bb Major Op. 99 Upon hearing this celestial, significant work, Schumann declared, “One glance at Schubert’s Bb Trio—and the troubles of human existence disappear and all the world is fresh and bright again.” Schubert was Viennese through and through. He was born in Himmelpfortgrund, a district of Vienna, he lived much of his life in the city, and he died there. When he was away from Vienna, he would soon miss it. He would pine for his beloved Vienna and its life, his friends, and the theaters and cafes. |
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Monday, January 20 ♦ 2 PM & 7:30 PM Tickets: $25, $17, $10 ~ Reservations advised Maxim Lando piano Danbi Um violin Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt viola Oskar MERIKANTO Valse Lento Op. 33 Merikanto (1868–1924) was a household name in Finland—from the mid-1880s to the 1920s he influenced the taste of the Finns, from cities to rural towns, through his melodious folk songs that were inspired by salon romances. After studies at the Leipzig Conservatory in 1887–1888 and in Berlin in 1890–1891, he had an active career and his accomplishments were of great importance in the development of Finnish musical life in the early 20th century. He was an organist in Helsinki, teacher at the Helsinki Music College, music critic for the daily paper Päivälehti, an excellent accompanist for singers, and a conductor from 1911 until 1922 of the Finnish Domestic Opera, which he cofounded with Finland’s star soprano Aino Ackté and others. Merikanto believed in the beauty of music. In 1909 he wrote that “music will return to simple forms, clarity and esprit if the currents of the time dissolve into peace and harmony.” (Oskar Merikanto is not to be confused with his son, Aarre, who composed many notable works in the Modernist style.) Burmester (1869–1933) was a German violin prodigy to whom Sibelius originally dedicated his Violin Concerto. He studied under Joseph Joachim from 1882 to 1885 at the Hochschule in Berlin, but later departed from the classical tradition when he focused on music in the bravura style. A Paganini recital he gave in Berlin in 1894 led to his sought-after international breakthrough. Bernhard Henrik CRUSELL Divertimento in C Major Op. 9 The Divertimento was described by Peter Lawson as “more of a concerto piece...requiring a virtuosic almost operatic personality from the soloist.... It’s beautifully crafted, and...there’s an abundance of early-Romantic coloring, despite its obviously-Classical roots. Every commonplace idea is balanced by an agreeable surprise” in its unexpected shifts in mode and harmony. Crusell was born in 1775 to a poor bookbinder in the town of Uusikaupunki, then known for its wooden tableware and furniture production. His ticket out of Finland, and ultimately to Stockholm, was his facility on the clarinet, which he began playing at the age of 4. At age 12 he was apprenticed to a military band in Sveaborg, and moved with it to Stockholm, where in 1793 he was made a court musician. Among his teachers were Franz Tausch in Berlin, Jean Xavier Lefèvre in Paris, and Abbé Georg Joseph Vogler, who founded a national music school in Stockholm. “His association with the greatest writers of his day through Stockholm’s Gothic Society, which he joined in 1818, led to his greatest successes, in settings of poems…. Crusell was also a brilliant linguist and his translations of the foremost French, German and Italian operas for the Swedish stage earned him the Swedish Academy’s Gold Medal in 1837 [New Grove Dictionary].” He was also the first Finnish composer whose music appeared in print, published by Peters in Leipzig (another measure of his success). He died in 1838 in Stockholm. Ernst MIELCK String Quartet in G minor Op. 1 After a brief meteoric rise, Mielck’s career was cut down by his death at the age of 21. During his short life he was excluded from the mainstream: he spoke German in a land where Finns and Swedes were striving for linguistic supremacy; his musical orientation was towards Romanticism influenced by Mendelssohn and Schumann at a time when Finnish Nationalism (colored by Wagnerism) was entering its prime; and he was a fragile recluse. Born in 1877 into a wealthy family of merchants in Viipuri and raised in a cultured home, Mielck was a sickly child and barely spoke at age 7. It is possible he had meningitis, rickets, and tuberculosis, as well as autism. He was homeschooled and began to study music at age 10. Before he turned 14, he was sent to Berlin to study at the Stern Conservatory with Robert Radecke and privately with Max Bruch. He made his debut as a pianist in Viipuri at the age of 17, and in the next few years he wrote a handful of compositions, including the first substantial symphony ever written in Finland in 1897, predating the First Symphony of Sibelius by two years. He died of tuberculosis in Switzerland in 1899. Although Mielck’s talent was viewed suspiciously, Sibelius was friendly to him and he was encouraged by the conductor Robert Kajanus, founder and conductor of the Helsinki Orchestral Society and notable interpreter and champion of Sibelius. The conductor Arthur Nikisch also gave him encouraging references, and he was a favorite pupil of Bruch, who wrote the following recommendation: “To Whom it May Concern: This is to certify that Ernst Mielck of Vyborg, Finland, has been my private pupil from October 1895 to May 1896. Under my direction he addressed himself to score reading, exercises in the art of orchestration, and the detailed formal analysis of the works of the masters, demonstrating a profound understanding. With my guidance he wrote a String Quartet which showed him to be in possession of an easy, felicitous, and remarkable flair for invention, and an ever-increasing and most pleasing understanding of the essence and the inherent aims and purposes of instrumental music. He was for me an exceptionally dear pupil, who has through his unquestionable talent and the greatest diligence—brought me nothing but joy and who, should he continue to develop in the same vein, must inspire the greatest hopes for the future.” Jean SIBELIUS Piano Quintet in G minor The Quintet was written during a year of private study in Berlin, following his graduation from the Helsinki Music Institute. The premiere of its first and third movements was performed by none other than the great Italian pianist Ferruccio Busoni (his teacher and lifelong friend) and the Norwegian composer and violinist Johan Halvorsen, both of whom were impressed with the Quintet. It did not receive a full performance until 1965. Details of his year in Berlin is recounted at Sibelius.info: “In Berlin, the 23-year-old Sibelius had powerful musical experiences…. [He heard Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Wagner’s Tannhäuser and Die Meistersinger, Hans von Bülow’s legendary piano concerts, Richard Strauss’s Don Juan, and performances by the Joachim Quartet of Beethoven’s Op. 50 String Quartet and Schubert’s String Quartet in C Major, both of which made deep impressions.] Sibelius became a student of Albert Becker and had to do the rigorous composition exercises that his teacher demanded…. The endless practice in fugal techniques and the laborious counterpoint exercises were no doubt useful, but Sibelius’s composing vein dried up for months on end. Sibelius did not like the atmosphere of Berlin…the spirit of the times was too pessimistic and conservative for his taste. He mainly socialized with other foreign students.… Sibelius played chamber music with his friends and bought cheap scores from local second-hand bookshops. In the evenings, he lived far beyond his means, buying tickets for the best seats at the opera and enjoying the cuisine of high-class restaurants. This merry student life led to illness—and even to venereal disease if we are to believe the uninhibited letters he wrote at the time. In November 1889, Sibelius was admitted to hospital. On his recovery, he met Ferruccio Busoni. Busoni invited Sibelius…to Leipzig to hear the first public performance of a piano quintet composed by their mutual friend Christian Sinding. Busoni was the pianist at the concert. Sinding’s work awakened in Sibelius the will to compose, and in the spring of 1890 he put the finishing touches to his only significant work during the Berlin year, the piano quintet in G minor…. Becker was satisfied with the piano quintet and wrote a positive report in which he emphasized the importance of additional studies. The piano quintet was sufficient proof for the senate, which granted Sibelius a scholarship of 2000 marks (about 8000 euros in today’s money) for the following academic year.” |
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Jupiter 2024 - 2025 Season Tickets: $25, $17, $10 ~ Reservation advised Please visit our Media Page to hear Audio Recordings from the Jens Nygaard and Jupiter Symphony Archive Concert Venue:
Office Address:
Like our Facebook page to see photos, videos, Jupiter in the News ConcertoNet
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As promised, here are the videos of John Field’s Divertissement No. 1 and Sir Hamilton Harty’s Piano Quintet. Fortuitously, our Jupiter musicians had the good sense to record the rehearsal in an impromptu decision, literally minutes before pressing the record button. Pianist Mackenzie Melemed (replacing Roman Rabinovich at the last minute) learned the music in 2 days! Bravo to him. Both works are Irish rarities that were scheduled for the March 16 performances which had to be canceled because of the coronavirus epidemic. Even though the entire program could not be recorded because of technical issues, we are pleased to be able to share with you the 2 musical gems. Enjoy. John FIELD Divertissement No. 1 H. 13 We thank the University of Illinois (Champaign) for a copy of the Divertissement music. Mackenzie Melemed piano
Sir Hamilton HARTY Piano Quintet in F Major Op. 12 Andrew Clements of the Guardian proclaimed the beautiful Quintet “a real discovery: a big, bold statement full of striking melodic ideas and intriguing harmonic shifts, which adds Brahms and Dvořák into Harty’s stylistic mix, together with Tchaikovsky in some passages.” There’s folk music charm as well, reminiscent of Percy Grainger—notably in the Scherzo (Vivace) with its folksy quirks and nonchalance, and the winding, pentatonic melody in the Lento. Our gratitude to the Queen’s University Library in Belfast, Northern Ireland, for a copy of the autograph manuscript of the music. Much thanks, too, to Connor Brown for speedily creating a printed score and parts from Harty’s manuscript. Mackenzie Melemed piano I Allegro 0:00 | ||||||
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Jupiter featured on Our Net News American program opener on March 18, with grateful thanks to Michael Shaffer of OurNetNews.com for recording the matinee concert, and making available the Horatio Parker Suite video for our viewing pleasure. Horatio Parker Suite in A Major, Op. 35, composed in 1893 Stephen Beus piano
More video from this performance can be viewed on our media page |
Jupiter on YouTube NEW YORK CANVAS : The Art of Michael McNamara is a video portrait of the artist who has painted iconic images of New York City for more than a decade, capturing the changing urban landscape of his adopted city. Our Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players provide the music from Brahms’s Piano Quartet in G Minor, underscoring the inspiration the artist has drawn from Jens Nygaard and the musicians. Michael was also our Jupiter volunteer from 2002 to 2010. Here is a video of the Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players performance of the Rondo alla Zingarese movement:
The producer-director, Martin Spinelli, also made the EMMY Award-winning “Life On Jupiter: The Story of Jens Nygaard, Musician.” For more information, visit our media
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“Some great musicians get a statue when they pass away. Some get their name imprinted on the roof of a well-known concert hall. But the late conductor Jens Nygaard has a living tribute: an entire ensemble of musicians and a concert series to go along with it... It is one of the city’s cultural jewels... In the end, if Mr. Nygaard was known for anything, it was unmitigated verve. That’s what the audience regularly returned for, and that’s what they got Monday afternoon. To have a grassroots community of musicians continue to celebrate Mr. Nygaard with indomitable performances like these week after week, even without the power of world-famous guest soloists, is proper tribute. And with more large orchestras and ensembles needing more corporate sponsorship year after year, I, for one, hope the Jupiter’s individual subscriber-base remains strong. New York’s musical life needs the spirit of Jens Nygaard, and Mei Ying should be proud she’s keeping it alive.” Read the complete article on our reviews page. |
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MeiYing Manager All
performances, except where otherwise noted, are held at: Copyright © 1999-2024 Jupiter Symphony. All rights reserved. |
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