2022 Chamber Concert Series
2022 Chamber Concert: Willamette University Student String Quartet
The Oregon Coast Youth Symphony Festival’s Chamber Concert Series concerts focus on talented individuals and string quartets. In this video, the Willamette University Student String Quartet performs Shostakovich’s Eighth.
On the surface, Dmitri Shostakovich’s 8th quartet can sound dark, depressing and maybe a little confusing. However, the piece comes alive and is very powerful and moving when the composer’s purpose is explained and compositional techniques revealed. For starters, Shostakovich starts the piece with four notes in the cello that spell out part of his name in German (D – Eb/Es – C – B/H or D. Sch) which repeat over and over throughout all five movements. He manages to use every chromatic note in the scale (meaning all of the notes including sharp notes and flat notes) in the first several measures of the piece to tonally disorient the listener. Shostakovich then finds the key of C minor, which is a historically tragic musical key. This makes sense considering Shostakovich dedicated the quartet in part to victims of war and composed his 8th quartet in 1960 while visiting Dresden, (formerly East) Germany, the site of many civilian deaths due to the fire-bombing of the town in World War II.
The approximately 22-minute-long quartet has five movements which run straight into each other without any breaks. This can make it a little bit tricky to know when one movement ends and the next one begins. To summarize the movements briefly: the first movement is slow and dark; the second movement is really fast and frantic; the third movement is a waltz in three with those notes – D Eb C B – repeated over and over again; the fourth movement has three really loud chords which some people theorize might represent gunshots from the war while others believe them to be the knock of the KGB; and the fifth movement ends slowly again, settling back into C minor.
Musician Bios
The Willamette University Shostakovich Quartet consists of Seth Harper, Frances Komoda, Jeremy Falk, and Connor Cordes. Although they have all played in various ensembles together in previous years, this quartet has been playing together since fall 2021.
Seth Harper grew up in Olympia, Washington, and started playing the violin in second grade. He graduated from high school in 2019, where he played in symphony orchestra and various chamber ensembles. He also played for eight years in SOGO (Student Orchestras of Greater Olympia). He’s currently a junior Political Science major at Willamette University where he plays in chamber orchestra, a quartet, and studies with Wyatt True.
Frances Komoda is studying environmental science and sustainability at Willamette but has been playing violin for as long as she can remember. She attended South Salem High School where she had the honor of winning the OSAA state championship with her orchestra, participating in OMEA all-northwest and other honorable ensembles that led her to Willamette today. The violin is one of her greatest joys and will be with her forever, no matter what she decides to do in life.
Jeremy Falk plays the viola and grew up in Davis, California. He was lucky to have access to a well-supported, public school music program. Jeremy began playing in fourth grade at his elementary school. He later played in his high school’s baroque ensemble and symphony, as well as a quartet. He is currently a senior at Willamette University, majoring in physics. While at Willamette, Jeremy has played in the chamber orchestra, Willamette Pro Musica, jazz, and small ensembles. He previously studied under Sue McDonald, and currently studies under Kim Uwate.
Connor Cordes is a senior politics major at Willamette University. Originally from Pennsylvania, Connor started playing the cello through his school’s music program at the age of 9. In addition to the Quartet, Connor also plays in Willamette’s University Chamber Orchestra and studies the cello with Valdine Mishkin. Connor is the 2021-2022 Willamette Concerto Competition winner and will perform the first movement from Elgar’s Cello Concerto with the University Chamber Orchestra in the spring.
2022 Chamber Concert: Portland State University
Beethoven’s 252nd Anniversary
Tomás Cotik, Violin • Julia Hwakyu Lee, Piano
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Violin Sonata No. 9 in A Major, Op. 47 (“Kreutzer”)
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Adagio sostenuto – Presto
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Presto
Violin Sonata No. 6 in A Major, Op. 30
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Adagio molto espressivo
About the Pieces
Beethoven: Sonata No. 6 in A, Op. 30, No. 1
Nine of the ten sonatas composed by Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) for the duo of piano and violin were composed in a period of six years, between 1797 and 1803, the last one in 1812.
The Op. 30 sonatas represent a Beethoven just into his 30s, ready artistically and technically to plunge into a Third Symphony, the “Eroica,” that would burst through symphonic boundaries, but also a Beethoven heavily weighted by the knowledge that deafness, the bitterest scourge for a composer to bear, was a malady that would only become worse with the years.
In 1801, Beethoven wrote to his doctor of his despair over his growing deafness. “My hearing has grown steadily worse for three years,” he lamented. “I am living a wretched life; for two years I have avoided almost all social gatherings because it is impossible for me to tell people – ‘I am deaf.’” The following year, depressed by the worsening condition and on the advice of his doctor, Beethoven took a house in the quiet Viennese suburb of Heiligenstadt. There he wrote what has become known as the “Heiligenstadt Testament,” a document in which he tells first of his thoughts of suicide and then of his resolve not to leave the world until he had “brought forth all that I felt called upon to produce.” Rising from the depths of personal anguish, the composer brought forth, among other works, the three Opus 30 sonatas for piano and violin published in 1803.
In the first piece of this set, his sixth sonata for the string-keyboard duo, Beethoven has become very much his own man, striking out with a distinctly formed individuality almost free of the ties that bound him to his predecessors. We find this to be apparent immediately in the first movement’s main idea, which is an organic entity rather than a theme. In truth, this main matter is more utilitarian than it is compelling, but the secondary theme’s songfulness more than compensates for its predecessor’s shortcomings. Both themes are brought to fruition in a development section whose distinctiveness is the mark of Beethoven’s inventive strength.
Excerpts taken from Howard, Orrin, “Sonata No. 6 in A, Op. 30, No. 1”, https://www.theford.com/musicdb/pieces/3561/sonata-no-6-in-a-op-30-no-1. Black Central Europe. Accessed 12 February 2022.
Beethoven: Violin Sonata No. 9 in A Major, Op. 47 (“Kreutzer”)
Beethoven wrote this Sonata, his ninth for piano and violin, in the spring of 1803. It was first performed on May 24 of that year, though Beethoven barely got it done in time: he called his copyist at 4:30 that morning to begin copying a part for him, and at the concert he and the violinist had to perform some of the music from Beethoven’s manuscript. The violinist on that occasion was George Polgreen Bridgetower* (1778-1860), a mulatto virtuoso who had performed throughout Europe. Beethoven was so taken with Bridgetower’s playing that he intended to dedicate the Sonata to him, and we might know this music today as the “Bridgetower” Sonata but for the fact that the composer and the violinist quarreled and Beethoven dedicated it instead to the French violinist Rudolph Kreutzer, whom he had met in Vienna a few years earlier. But Kreutzer found this music beyond his understanding and – ironically – never performed the Sonata that bears his name.
Beethoven…warned performers that the Sonata was “written in a very concertante style, quasi-concerto-like.” From the first instant, one senses that this is music conceived on a grand scale. The Sonata opens with a slow introduction (the only one in Beethoven’s ten violin sonatas), a cadenza-like entrance for the violin alone. The piano makes a similarly dramatic entrance, and gradually the two instruments outline the interval of a rising half-step that will figure prominently in the first movement. At the Presto, the music explodes forward, and while Beethoven provides calmer episodes along the way, including a chorale-like second subject marked dolce, the burning energy of this Presto opening is never far off: the music whips along on an almost machine-gun-like patter of eighth-notes, and these eventually drive the movement to its abrupt cadence.
Relief comes in the Andante con variazioni. The piano introduces the central theme, amiable but itself already fairly complex, and there follow four lengthy variations. The final movement – Presto – returns to the mood of the first. A simple A-major chord is the only introduction, and off the music goes.
Excerpts from Eric, Bromberger. “Violin Sonata No. 9 “Kreutzer”, L.A. Phil, https://www.laphil.com/musicdb/pieces/4604/violin-sonata-no-9-kreutzer. Accessed 12 February 2022.
*George Augustus Polgreen Bridgetower
George Augustus Polgreen Bridgetower (1778 or 1780-1860) was a celebrated violinist who toured Britain and the continent. He was born in Biała in Austrian Galicia, the son of a Black West Indian servant and a white German or Polish mother, and was raised among Prince Nicholas Esterházy’s court musicians. A child prodigy, he made his debut in Paris in 1789 and played in Britain as well. He soon secured the patronage of the future King George IV, who furthered his musical education. He was elected to the Royal Society of Musicians, earned a music degree from Cambridge, and was one of the first members of the Royal Philharmonic Society. Like Joseph Boulogne, Chevalier de St. Georges, (1745-1799) and Ira Aldridge (1807-1867), Bridgetower was a Black celebrity whose work crossed European borders and challenged widespread preconceptions about racialized inferiority.
He left Britain for Dresden to visit his mother in 1802, and after giving concerts there was invited to Vienna, where he became fast friends with Ludwig van Beethoven. Beethoven was inspired by Bridgetower’s playing and revised a newly written piece, Sonata op. 47, just for him. They debuted the piece together on 24 May 1803 in the Augartensaal. Even though the composer’s last-minute revisions meant that Bridgetower had to play from Beethoven’s own hand-written manuscript the violinist’s brilliance shone through in the performance.
Excerpts taken from Bowersox, Jeff. “BEETHOVEN PERFORMS WITH HIS FRIEND GEORGE BRIDGETOWER, THE “GREAT MULATTO COMPOSER AND LUNATIC” (1803)”, Black Central Europe. https://blackcentraleurope.com/sources/1750-1850/beethoven-performs-with-his-friend-george-bridgetower-the-great-mulatto-composer-and-lunatic-1803/. Accessed 12 February 2022.
About the Musicians
Tomás Cotik
Hailed by Michael Tilson Thomas as “an excellent violinist,” Tomás Cotik was a first-prize winner at the National Broadcast Music Competition in his native Argentina in 1997, and the winner of the Government of Canada Award for 2003-2005. An avid recording artist, Dr. Cotik is currently involved in more than fifteen CD recordings for Naxos and Centaur Records, which have received over a hundred reviews and the highest praise from some of the best-known publications. A former rotating concertmaster with the New World Symphony and a leader with various other orchestras in the United States and abroad, Cotik has performed with internationally prominent conductors such as Michael Tilson Thomas, Valery Gergiev, Roberto Abbado, Yakov Kreizberg, Marin Alsop, Stephan Deneve, Roger Norrington, and Robert Spano in notable venues such as Carnegie Hall.
Cotik has performed hundreds of recitals and chamber music concerts across the globe. Since 2011, he is a member the Cotik/Lin duo. He was also a member of the acclaimed Amernet, Delray, and Harrington string quartets. He has worked closely with artists such as Joseph Kalichstein, Franklin Cohen and members of the Cleveland, Miami, Pro Arte, Vogler, Vermeer, Tokyo and Endellion string quartets.
Committed to both performing and teaching, Dr. Cotik is the violin professor at Portland State University, where he recently received the inaugural Dean’s Council Award For Research, Scholarship & Creativity for his significant contributions to research, scholarship and creative activity at the international level. He previously taught at West Texas A&M University, Florida International University, and at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music. Read more at his website, www.tomascotik.com.
Julia Hwakyu Lee
Julia Hwakyu Lee, pianist, has performed solo and chamber music in New York, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Portland, Toronto and cities in Korea including Seoul. Her multiple prizes and awards include the Chamber winner in Niagara International Music Competition in Canada, Gold Medal in Hankuk Ilbo Competition in Korea, Beethoven competition in Wisconsin-Madison, and fellowship recipient in Gilmore Keyboard Festival in Michigan. She has been a soloist with University of Wisconsin Symphony Orchestra, Korean I Musici Chamber Orchestra, Portland’s Columbia Symphony, University of Portland Orchestra and Ulsan University Chamber Orchestra. She presented lecture recitals at the College Music Society national conference and regional conference. As an active adjudicator, she adjudicated NW Chopin competition and Simon-Fiset competition, The Claremont Colleges’ Rudolph Polk Memorial Award in Music, Seattle International Piano Festivals, including festivals in Portland and Salem, OR.
She is a very devoted teacher, and her students have won numerous national and international competitions including Seattle International Piano Competition and MTNA National Competitions. Several of her students soloed with the orchestras in Wisconsin, Illinois, Washington, Idaho and Oregon. Her students are on the faculty of Linfield College, Clark College and University of Portland.
Dr. Lee received her doctorate in musical arts in piano performance from the University of Wisconsin, her master’s degree in music from Korean National University of Arts, and her bachelorate degree in music from Yonsei University, Seoul. Dr. Lee is on the faculties of the University of Portland and Portland State University.
