Ravinia 2022, Issue 2

PATRICK GIPSON Right: While a fellow at the Ravinia Steans Music Institute in 2010, Ouzounian focused on growth as a chamber musician, working with faculty like Laurence Lesser on solo sonatas and small-ensemble works like she plays with the Aizuri Quartet. RSMI’s Program for Piano & Strings gives young professional musicians a setting to devote singular attention to those tighter collaborations, as opposed to orchestra music. Below: Ouzounian (near right), violist Ayane Kozasa (near left), and violinist Miho Saegusa (far left) parlayed their summer together at RSMI in 2011 into forming the Aizuri Quartet the following year. They returned together in 2014 expressly to further develop as an ensemble. Miriam Fried’s belief in the Aizuri Quartet was huge for our development. The seriousness of the study at Ravinia is so inspiring, the coaching and all the rehearsal time we had living together. absolutely. But we also started having pieces written for us and playing newer music. “We were invited to be the quartet in residence at the Met Museum in the 2017–18 season, and we started developing our own approach to programming, juxtaposing a lot of different music and having music arranged for string quartet that wasn’t originally written for it. We invited collaborators—poets, composers, a Japanese shakuhachi player—really developing these creative programs, approaching a theme from as many angles as we could. That was an important moment for the quartet. It’s something we’ve continued to embrace, to really challenge ourselves on the programming side.” The first concert of the Met series typified the Aizuri’s approach. Titled Music and Mayhem, it featured pieces by composers confronting war and societal collapse—a quartet by Sofia Gubaidulina written as the Soviet Union crumbled; Steve Reich’s Dif- ferent Trains , a meditation on World War II for quartet and pre-recorded tape; and Beethoven’s “Harp” Quartet from 1809, composed as Napoleon marched toward Vienna. The Knights’ September 13 pro- gram in Ravinia’s Martin Theatre is similarly inventive. Titled The Kreutzer Project, it takes a wide-rang- ing look at one of Beethoven’s most famous works: the impassioned Violin Sonata No. 9 (nicknamed “Kreutzer” for its dedicatee) for violin and piano, composed in 1803. The sonata directly inspired at least two other notable works of art: Tolstoy’s 1889 novella The Kreutzer Sonata , a roiling tale of lust, insanity, jealousy, and obsession, and Leoš Janáček’s intense, driven String Quartet No. 1 ( Kreutzer Sona- ta) , composed in 1923. The Knights asked two contemporary composers— Anna Clyne and Colin Jacobsen (their co-director)—to look at Beethoven’s sonata, Tolstoy’s novella and Janáček’s string quartet and write new pieces in response. In addition to Jacobsen’s Kreutzings and Clyne’s Shorthand, the concert will include chamber orches- tra arrangements of Beethoven’s sona- ta, Janáček’s quartet, and a collection of Moravian/Slovakian folk songs. “The idea of time travel is at the heart of The Kreutzer Project,” said Ouzounian, referring to the sonata’s influence decades, even centuries after Beethoven wrote it. “Anna was in- spired by a line from Tolstoy’s novella: ‘Music is the shorthand of emotion.’ Her piece draws on two themes, one from the Beethoven sonata, the other from the Janáček quartet. She uses that material as the DNA of the piece. The cello doesn’t get to take a beat of rest. It’s incredibly passionate and gorgeous.” Clyne wrote two versions of Short- hand , one for cello and string quintet and one for cello and string orchestra. RAVINIA MAGAZINE • JULY 4 – JULY 17, 2022 16