Pacifica Quartet to Celebrate America's 250th Birthday at KU's Schaeffer Auditorium

Pacifica Quartet to Celebrate America's 250th Birthday at KU's Schaeffer Auditorium

By Susan L. Peña

KUTZTOWN, Pa. - The 250th birthday of the United States will bring many celebrations this year, both patriotic and artistic. One of the most captivating will surely be the Pacifica Quartet's concert, featuring works by Dvořák, Ives and Korngold, 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 12, at Kutztown University's Schaeffer Auditorium as part of the KU Presents! Performing Artists Series.

When the Czech composer Antonin Dvořák visited the United States from 1892 to 1895 to direct the National Conservatory of Music in New York City, he was famously quoted by journalist James Creelman as saying, "I am now satisfied that the future of music in this country must be founded upon what are called Negro melodies. This must be the foundation of any serious and original school of composition to be developed in the United States. These are the folk songs of America, and your compositions must turn to them."

This was long before ragtime, jazz, gospel and blues began to inspire "classical" composers, and while he turned out to be correct, it was a controversial statement at that time. But Dvořák, who drew from Czech folk traditions for inspiration, incorporated Negro spirituals and other American sounds in his "From the New World" Symphony and his "American" String Quartet, both written while he was in New York and Spillville, Iowa.

The Pacifica Quartet will be performing the "American" Quartet in the KU program, as well as pieces by American composers Charles Ives and Erich Wolfgang Korngold (a refugee from 1930s Vienna). The Pacifica, founded in 1994, consists of founding members Simin Ganatra (first violin) and Brandon Vamos (cello), second violinist Austin Hartman and violist Mark Holloway.

Hartman, in a recent interview, said that this program has emerged from a three-album recording project concentrating on American chamber music, beginning during the Covid pandemic and leading up to this important anniversary year.

The first of these "American Stories" was a series of clarinet quintets with guest clarinetist Anthony McGill, "each of which tells a story about the American experience," Hartman said, "including Richard Danielpour's 'Four Angels' (about the 1963 Birmingham, Ala. Church bombing) and Valerie Coleman's 'Shotgun House' (a tribute to boxer Muhammad Ali)."

In "American Voices," he said, "we explored how to look back at our country and some things that transpired. The centerpiece was the 'American' String Quartet, along with Florence Price's String Quartet No. 1 and Louis Gruenberg's 'Four Diversions' for String Quartet, written during Prohibition."

"American Portraits," to be released this year, includes commissioned works by Jennifer Higdon and Gabriela Lena Frank for narrator (Sigourney Weaver) and string quartet, with words by Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Rachel Carson.

Hartman called the "American" Quartet "one of the most famous pieces in our repertoire. As a group, we want to play it in a fresh, new way that highlights the fact that this piece is from someone who came to the U.S. and absorbed everything that was going on. Through the Czech language, he reveals all that's unique and wonderful about America, from the spiritual in the second movement to the call of the scarlet tanager in the third, to the sound of the train leaving the station in the fourth."

As for the Quartet No. 1 (1896) by the idiosyncratic composer from Danbury, Conn., Charles Ives, Hartman pointed out that "he was incorporating hymn tunes, and that was very new, because hymns were looked down on as a 'second class' kind of music."

While Ives later took out the first movement, which contains "From Greenland's Icy Mountains" and "All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name," the Pacifica will be including it in this performance. Throughout the quartet, familiar Christian hymns emerge - including "Beulah Land," "Bringing in the Sheaves," "Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing," and others - dressed in Ivesian experimental harmonies.

"Audiences have so much enjoyed this quartet," Hartman said.

Erich Korngold, a Viennese-Jewish classical composer, was invited by the director Max Reinhardt in 1934 to adapt Felix Mendelssohn's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" for his film version of the Shakespeare play. Korngold later immigrated to Los Angeles, Calif., to escape the Holocaust. He composed many film scores, including "Captain Blood," "The Sea Wolf" and "King's Row."

"There were Korngold fan clubs that came to the movies to hear his music," Hartman said. "He was so respected by directors that he was allowed to tell them where to cut the film to fit the score."

Korngold's Quartet No. 3, also on the Pacifica program, was written in 1946, using themes from his scores for "Between Two Worlds," "The Sea Wolf" and "Devotion."

"The piece is very complex, and he uses specific markings in German, often about emotions and feelings," Hartman said. "We include this piece because part of what makes America great is what immigrants have brought to us."

The Pacifica Quartet has recently released "The Korngold Collection," which contains all three String Quartets, the Piano Quintet in E Major (1920) with guest pianist Orion Weiss; and the String Sextet in D Major (1914), featuring violist Milena Pájaro-van de Stadt and cellist Eric Kim.

Upcoming projects are another album, "The Ives Experience," more concerts throughout the summer, and in the 2026-27 season, and "a fusion of pieces around the idea of revolutionaries," Hartman said.

Hartman, a native of Bryn Mawr, Pa., spent his school years in Lancaster and graduated from Lancaster Country Day School. He began violin studies at age 3 and earned degrees in music from the Cleveland Institute of Music and the New England Conservatory and artist diplomas from Juilliard and Yale. He joined the Pacifica Quartet in 2017. He is on the faculty of Indiana University Bloomington's Jacobs School of Music, where the Pacifica Quartet is quartet-in-residence, overseeing 30 student quartets.

Tickets for the Pacifica Quartet are $35 for adults, $34 for seniors and $19 for students. They can be purchased at the KU Presents! website or by calling the KU Presents! Box Office 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., Tuesday through Thursday, at 610-683-4092. Established to be the center of cultural life at Kutztown University, KU Presents! serves the campus and community by bringing world-class live arts that entertain, educate and enrich.