Harmonia Chamber Players III
Saturday, April 19, 2025 • 2:00 p.m.
The Unitarian Church at 6556 35th Avenue NE
Chris Peterson, clarinet • Gregor Nitsche, violin • Manchung Ho, violin
Grant Hanner, viola • Katie Sauter Messick, cello
Leah Anderson • Ellyn Liu, violin
Colleen Chlastawa, viola • Liam Frye-Mason, cello
Program
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875–1912)
Clarinet Quintet, Op. 10
— intermission —
Jean Sibelius (1865–1957)
String Quartet in D minor, Op. 56 (Voces Intimae)
Program Notes
The son of an Englishwoman and a Sierra Leonean doctor, Samuel Coleridge Taylor gave a violin recital at age 8, sang in a boychoir, and enrolled at the Royal College of Music at age 15, studying composition with Charles Villiers Stanford. His family called him “Coleridge,” but a printing error in a concert program purportedly led to him hyphenating his name for professional use. Antonín Dvořák was a major influence, including on the subject matter of his 1898 cantata Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast, which helped him gain fame (and which was performed regularly over the next few decades by English choral societies). Sir Arthur Sullivan wrote of that work: “Much impressed by the lad’s genius. He is a composer, not a music-maker. The music is fresh and original.”
When Stanford claimed that no one could write a quintet for clarinet and strings without being influenced by the one Brahms produced in 1891, his student accepted the challenge, instead channeling Dvořák for the work he completed in 1895. Stanford’s verdict: “You’ve done it, me boy!”
The son of a Swedish-speaking doctor (who died before the boy reached age three), Jean Sibelius learned Finnish at prep school, later changing his given name of Janne to the French Jean. He originally sought a career as a celebrated violinist until a disastrous audition for the Vienna Philharmonic shifted his focus to composition. At the turn of the 20th century, his patriotic tone poem Finlandia, his 1902 Symphony No. 2 and his violin concerto (1904–1905) solidified Sibelius’ reputation in the hearts of Finns as well as his position as a major composer on the world stage.
Sibelius wrote several works for string quartet in his youth, but his Op. 56 quartet is the only one he produced as a mature composer. He began writing it in December 1908, and continued working on it during early 1909 while in London. He wrote to his wife: “It turned out as something wonderful. The kind of thing that brings a smile to your lips at the hour of death. I will say no more.” While some passages (particularly the fiddle-inspired finale) look back to the rustic good nature of his recent Symphony No. 3, the quartet also foreshadows the thornier musical language of upcoming Symphony No. 4. The work’s subtitle, Voces Intimae, derives from a notation the composer made in a friend’s score above three isolated chords in the central slow movement.