Chamber Music Kicks Off Season With String Quartets

September 20, 2018


Willy Sucre's ensemble to highlight music by Beethoven and Turina

 

SOCORRO, N.M. – The 2018-2019 season of the New Mexico Tech Presidential Chamber Music Series will open with string quartets by Turina and Beethoven, two composers of entirely different eras and temperaments, at 7:30 p.m. Monday, Sept. 24 at Macey Center.

New Mexico Tech President Stephen G. Wells is sponsoring the chamber music series, free to all. Socorro Springs is co-sponsor. The chamber music concerts are part of non-subscription offerings through the Performing Arts Series (PAS) under Director Ronna Kalish. The affable and well-known violist, Willy Sucre, returns as series host.

Willy Sucre portrait with viola“These concerts actually started as ‘Willy and Friends,’ a tradition that continues as Willy will be joined on stage throughout the four-concert series by other excellent chamber musicians,” Kalish said. “Our thanks, as well, to President Wells for his continued commitment to the performing arts.”

Joining the host violist for the season’s premier concert are Kevin Connolly and Justin Pollack on violin and cellist James Holland.

The program opens with “La oracion del torero, Op 34” by Joaquin Turina Pérez (1882 – 1949), a Spanish composer whose music often conveys feelings of rapture or exaltation. Its title translates to “the bullfighter’s prayer,” and reflects the influence of folk music in Turina’s compositions.

It was written in 1925 and originally composed for lutes; but Turina was referring to lutes of Spanish folkloric instruments rather than those of the Renaissance or Baroque eras. The following year, Turina rearranged it for string quartet, as well as for both string orchestra and piano trio.

Story has it that Turina was standing in the court of horses during an afternoon of bullfighting in the Madrid area, when, behind a small door, he saw a chapel filled with incense where the toreadors “filled with touching poetry, prayed to God to protect their lives.”

The artist was inspired seeing the contrast from the tumult of the arena to the anxious public awaiting the fiesta, to the spiritual devotion of the toreadors whose fates lay outside the chapel doors. Bullfighting, especially during this period, was seen as a symbol of Spanish culture. 

From Spain to Germany

From a more modern period in Spain the chamber music program moves back in time to Austria for Ludwig van Beethoven’s (1770 – 1827) “String Quartet No. 7 in F Major, Op. 59, No. 1,” published in 1808. It is the first of three quartets commissioned by the then-Russian ambassador to Vienna; and, as such, is culturally diverse from the folk music influence of the Turina work. 

Vienna is the capital and largest city of Austria, and has long been one of the major centers for cultural development in central Europe.

The composition consists of four movements: I. Allegro, II. Allegretto vivace e sempre scherzando, III., Adagio molto e mesto – attacca, and IV. “Theme Russe”: Allegro. The final movement is built around a popular Russian theme, likely an attempt to cater to its Russian commissioner.

It differs from previous Beethoven string quartets in its longer length and the technical proficiency required of the musicians who perform it.

Beethoven, who remains one of the most recognized and influential of all composers, was born in Bonn, Germany. At age 21 he moved to Vienna, where he remained until his death. By his late 20s, his hearing began to deteriorate, and he was almost completely deaf the last decade of his life.

In 1811 he gave up conducting and performing in public, but continued to compose; ironically, many of his most admired works come from these last 15 years.

Meet the musicians

Violinist Kevin Connolly was exposed to music at an early age playing with his father and brothers in a family string quartet in Albuquerque. His musical instruction continued under Jim Bonnell and Kathie Jarrett and later with Leonard Felberg at UNM.

He is currently a freelance, professional studio violinist living in Los Angeles. Kevin has recorded many film scores, including “The Life of Pi” that in 2013 earned an Oscar for Best Original Score. He is married and has a son, Colin, 11, who already plays guitar, piano, clarinet and violin.

Santa Fe native Justin Pollack first studied the violin under Catherine Nichols. As a student at UNM, he studied with Felberg and Bernard Zinck, as well as Kimberly Fredenburgh on viola. From 2001 to 2011, he was a violinist with the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra.

Pollack currently is a member of the Santa Fe Symphony Orchestra and the New Mexico Philharmonic. He frequently performs with Chatter on both violin and viola. In the winter and spring of 2012, he played concerts with the Figueroa Project and Opera Southwest.

Cellist James Holland is a native of Florida with degrees in cello performance from the University of Alabama and the Eastman School of Music. He performs frequently with most of New Mexico’s musical organizations, including Albuquerque Chamber Soloists, Chatter, The Figueroa Project, the Placitas Artists Series, Santa Fe Symphony and Santa Fe Pro Musica.

He spends his summers in Breckenridge, Colo., as principal cellist of the Breckenridge Music Festival orchestra, a position he has held since 1998. He can also be heard performing the music of Duke Ellington with other jazz legends on the 2013 IPO Recording release, “Duke at the Roadhouse: Live in Santa Fe”, which recently was named Best Jazz Album of the Year by L’Académie du Jazz in Paris, France.

Violist Willy Sucre is a member of the New Mexico Philharmonic and the driving force behind the “Willy Sucre & Friends” concerts. Born in La Paz, Bolivia, Sucre studied at the Conservatorio Nacional de Música in La Paz; Colby College Chamber Music Institute in Waterville, Maine; Mannes School of Music in New York; and the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, Maryland.

As a chamber musician, Sucre was the founder of the Cuarteto Boliviano, guest violist with various chamber music ensembles, and for 10 years the violist of the Helios String Quartet. He spends most of his summers in South America looking for new works of chamber music by modern composers and encouraging composers to write new pieces, especially piano quartets. And he clearly enjoys performing with ensembles of diverse instrumentation.

“On behalf of President Wells and our entire PAS family, we welcome everyone to this first chamber music program of the new performing arts season,” Kalish said. “And please stay to meet the musicians afterward.”

– NMT –