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Andrew Lewinter: Chamber Works

For Horn, Oboe, Strings & Piano

Andrew Lewinter composer

John Dee oboe
Bernhard David Scully horn
Casey Robards piano
Jupiter String Quartet | Nelson Lee violin; Meg Freivogel violin; Liz Freivogel viola; Daniel McDonough violincello

Release Date: November 11, 2022
Catalog #: NV6471
Format: Digital
21st Century
Chamber
Cello
Piano
Violin

Tonality is slowly but steadily making its way into the toolbox of contemporary music again. Accomplished orchestral horn player Andrew Lewinter, who returned to composing in 2016 after a long hiatus, thankfully discovered that very toolbox, and the result can be heard on ANDREW LEWINTER: CHAMBER WORKS.

Two quintets and one trio in classical instrumentation, and the neo-Romantic tonal language to match: it’s a difficult feat to pull off. Lewinter, however, diversifies with minimalist elements and, drawing from his considerable experience as an orchestral performer, imbues his chamber works with symphonic richness. It’s the secret ingredient, and it works.

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Track Listing & Credits

# Title Composer Performer
01 Trio for Oboe, Horn and Piano: I. Allegro Moderato Andrew Lewinter John Dee, oboe; Bernhard David Scully, horn; Casey Robards, piano 8:31
02 Trio for Oboe, Horn and Piano: II. Romanza Andrew Lewinter John Dee, oboe; Bernhard David Scully, horn; Casey Robards, piano 4:38
03 Trio for Oboe, Horn and Piano: III. Theme and Variations Andrew Lewinter John Dee, oboe; Bernhard David Scully, horn; Casey Robards, piano 7:43
04 Quintet for Oboe and Strings: I. Allegro Andrew Lewinter John Dee, oboe; Nelson Lee, violin; Meg Freivogel, violin; Liz Freivogel, viola; Daniel McDonough, violincello 6:09
05 Quintet for Oboe and Strings: II. Adagio Andrew Lewinter John Dee, oboe; Nelson Lee, violin; Meg Freivogel, violin; Liz Freivogel, viola; Daniel McDonough, violincello 6:48
06 Quintet for Oboe and Strings: III. Rondo Andrew Lewinter John Dee, oboe; Nelson Lee, violin; Meg Freivogel, violin; Liz Freivogel, viola; Daniel McDonough, violincello 6:42
07 Quintet for Horn and Strings: I. Allegro Andrew Lewinter Bernhard David Scully, horn; Nelson Lee, violin; Meg Freivogel, violin; Liz Freivogel, viola; Daniel McDonough, violincello 6:13
08 Quintet for Horn and Strings: II. Adagio Andrew Lewinter Bernhard David Scully, horn; Nelson Lee, violin; Meg Freivogel, violin; Liz Freivogel, viola; Daniel McDonough, violincello 5:16
09 Quintet for Horn and Strings: III. Rondo Andrew Lewinter Bernhard David Scully, horn; Nelson Lee, violin; Meg Freivogel, violin; Liz Freivogel, viola; Daniel McDonough, violincello 9:24

Trio for Oboe, Horn and Piano
Recorded June 28-29, 2021 at Krannert Hall, University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana IL
Recording Engineer Richard Scholwin
Producer Carlos Carillo

Quintet for Oboe and Strings, Quintet for Horn and Strings
Recorded January 8-9, 2022 at Krannert Hall, University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana IL
Recording Engineer Richard Scholwin

Executive Producer Bob Lord

A&R Director Brandon MacNeil
A&R Danielle Sullivan

VP of Production Jan Košulič
Audio Director Lucas Paquette

VP, Design & Marketing Brett Picknell
Art Director Ryan Harrison
Design Edward A. Fleming
Publicity Patrick Niland, Brett Iannucci

Artist Information

Andrew Lewinter

Composer

​Before turning his attention to composition, Andrew Lewinter had a long and varied career as an orchestral horn player and soloist. As a composer, Lewinter has a decidedly tonal and neo-romantic style that is often very contrapuntal and always emotionally gripping. His works include sonatas for each of the brass instruments and piano, a quartet for trumpet, horn, trombone and piano, quintets for both horn and string quartet and oboe and string quartet, a woodwind quintet, a string quartet, and a trio for oboe, horn, and piano, among other works scored for a variety of chamber ensembles. Lewinter’s compositions have been widely performed and recorded, and are available on Navona Records and Ablaze records.

Learn More

John Dee

Oboist

JOHN DEE is the Bill A. Nugent Endowed Professor of Music Performance and Professor of Oboe Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. For over twenty years, Professor Dee was Principal Oboe of the Florida Philharmonic Orchestra and Florida Grand Opera Orchestra. Over this time, he was also Oboe Professor at the University of Miami in Coral Gables and Artist in Residence at the Conservatory of Music at Lynn University. Prior to this, he was Principal Oboe of the Florida Orchestra in Tampa, the Ravinia Festival Orchestra and the Civic Orchestra of Chicago. He has performed and recorded with the Saint Louis, Atlanta and Chicago Symphony Orchestras and has worked with conductors such as Carlo Maria Giulini, James Levine, Claudio Abbado and Sir Georg Solti.

Professor Dee has performed and taught throughout the world and worked with nearly every major performing artist including Luciano Pavarotti, Jose Carreras, Placido Domingo, Isaac Stern, Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zuckerman, Joshua Bell, Yo-Yo Ma, James Galway, Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra. He has also performed for the Pope.

John is featured on Grammy Award-winning recordings, hundreds of commercial recordings, and five solo CDs. Critically acclaimed for numerous performances and recordings, one of his latest CD Music from America and Abroad was reviewed by the International Double Reed Society Journal:

“Hearing John Dee’s mastery of the single musical line is an education in how to phrase using every element of sound to its fullest tasteful measure”…
“Dee phrases exactly as one would speak about congenial matters to a good friend.”

John Dee has been awarded the Outstanding Teacher Award by the National Endowment for the Arts multiple times and his students have earned prestigious performance and teaching positions throughout the world.

Bernhard David Scully

Hornist

International Horn Soloist, Bernhard Scully, is currently the Associate Professor of Horn at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and is Artistic Director of the non-profit 501(c)(3) Cormont Music. He spends most of his summer in the beautiful White Mountains of New Hampshire as both the Artistic Director of the Kendall Betts Horn Camp and as the horn player of the North Country Chamber Players. He is the former horn player of the Canadian Brass and former principal horn of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. Among his many awards are top honors at numerous competitions, most notably being the first classical brass player to win a McKnight Fellowship for Performing Musicians. He has collaborated with many great North American Orchestras including the Chicago Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra as guest principal horn, Pittsburgh Symphony as guest principal horn, and as principal horn of the Violon du Roy in Quebec City.

As a soloist Bernhard is featured on numerous recordings. His solo album, Dialogue en Francais: French Masterpieces for Horn and Piano, was featured on Minnesota Public Radio. His recording The G. Schirmer Horn Collection Volumes One, Two, and Three (Hal Leonard Publishing) includes much of the standard repertoire for horn and piano. His CD, Windows in Time, features the premiere recording of Gunther Schuller’s “Quintet for Horn and Strings (2009)” in collaboration with the acclaimed Jupiter String Quartet. Gunther Schuller produced this recording himself, and this was one of the last projects he took part in before his unfortunate passing in 2015.

As a pedagogue Bernhard has given lectures and master classes around the world and is a regular featured artist at international music conventions and festivals. He has been on the faculties at the Chautauqua Festival, Rafael Mendez Brass Institute as a member of the Summit Brass, Music Academy of the West, Brevard Music Festival, Eastman School of Music, and in residence at the University of Toronto and the Banff Center for the Arts with the Canadian Brass. His students now occupy positions all over the globe as performers, educators, and scholars.

His degrees are from Northwestern University (with honors), and the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he attended on a Paul Collins Distinguished Graduate Fellowship. In 2010 the University of Wisconsin awarded him a Distinguished Alumni Award for excellence in artistry.

Casey Robards

pianist

Casey Robards, has given recitals with singers and instrumentalists throughout the United States, Europe, Central and South America and Asia. Her repertoire includes art song, opera, musical theatre, gospel and popular vocal music, string, brass, wind and chamber music. She gave her Carnegie Hall debut with baritone Christiaan Smith performing an original program of Top 40 pop songs sung as art song arrangements. In 2019, she was featured on two new CD releases: “Botanica: music for oboe and English horn” with Sara Fraker (MSR Classics) and “Chinese Fantasies” with violinist Fangye Sun (Blue Griffin). 2021-22 touring programs include solo recitals with Ollie Watts Davis, LaToya Lain, and Karen Slack, all featuring the music of Black American composers and writers.

Robards is currently on the faculty of the University of Illinois teaching collaborative piano, chamber music and vocal coaching. Previous appointments include Indiana University, Oberlin Conservatory (postdoc) and Central Michigan University. Robards’ growing career as a conductor includes leading productions  at the Bay View Music Festival (Die Zauberflöte, La Traviata, La Boheme) and Jake Heggie’s Three Decembers for South Bend Lyric Opera. In 2017, she served as associate music director of the world premiere of “BOUNCE: The Basketball opera” co-produced with Ardea Arts and Univ. of Kentucky and has played in the Broadway touring productions of Wicked, Beautiful: The Carole King Story, and West Side Story.

Casey is interested in the intersection of music and social justice and has led benefit recitals for MUSICAMBIA, a non-profit organization that creates music conservatories in prisons. Robards received the Henri Kohn Memorial Award for outstanding achievement at Tanglewood Music Festival. She completed her DMA in Vocal Accompanying and Coaching at the University of Illinois with her doctoral dissertation on the life and music of John Daniels Carter (1932-1981). Professional memberships include IKCAS (International Keyboard Collaborative Arts Society), NATS, Maestra, MUSE, and NOA (Sacred in Opera Initiative).

www.caseyrobards.com

Jupiter String Quartet

ensemble

The Jupiter String Quartet is a particularly intimate group, consisting of violinists Nelson Lee and Meg Freivogel, violist Liz Freivogel (Meg’s older sister), and cellist Daniel McDonough (Meg’s husband, Liz’s brother-in-law). Now enjoying their 20th year together, this tight-knit ensemble is firmly established as an important voice in the world of chamber music.

The quartet has performed in some of the world’s finest halls, including New York City’s Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, London’s Wigmore Hall, Boston’s Jordan Hall, Mexico City’s Palacio de Bellas Artes, Washington, D.C.’s Kennedy Center and Library of Congress, Austria’s Esterhazy Palace, and Seoul’s Sejong Chamber Hall. Their major music festival appearances include the Aspen Music Festival and School, Bowdoin International Music Festival, Cape Cod Chamber Music Festival, Rockport Music Festival, Music at Menlo, the Seoul Spring Festival, and many others. In addition to their performing career, they have been artists-in-residence at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana since 2012, where they maintain private studios and direct the chamber music program.

Their chamber music honors and awards include the grand prizes in the Banff International String Quartet Competition and the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition; the Young Concert Artists International auditions in New York City; the Cleveland Quartet Award from Chamber Music America; an Avery Fisher Career Grant; and a grant from the Fromm Foundation. From 2007-2010, they were in residence at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Chamber Music Two.

The quartet’s latest album is a collaboration with the Jasper String Quartet (Marquis Classics, 2021), produced by Grammy-winner Judith Sherman. This collaborative album features the world premiere recording of Dan Visconti’s Eternal Breath, Felix Mendelssohn’s Octet in E-flat, Op. 20, and Osvaldo Golijov’s Last Round. The quartet’s discography also includes numerous recordings on labels including Azica Records and Deutsche Grammophon.

The quartet chose its name because Jupiter was the most prominent planet in the night sky at the time of its formation and the astrological symbol for Jupiter resembles the number four.

www.jupiterquartet.com | Photo by Sarah Gardner

Notes

All three compositions on this recording by Andrew Lewinter are in a decidedly romantic idiom with respect to both the harmonies and the structure of each work. All movements of each composition are interconnected and thematically related to the opening intervals of the main theme of each first movement. The oboe’s first statement of the theme of the first movement of Lewinter’s Quintet for Oboe and Strings centers around a perfect fifth and octave. Those intervals also frame the main themes of the lyrical second movement and spirited Rondo movement.

Lewinter’s Trio for Oboe, Horn, and Piano is also in three movements. The first interval of the main theme of the first movement, a descending augmented fifth, is the kernel from which the rest of the piece grows. The second movement, a Romanza, starts with a descending minor sixth. The last movement is a theme and variations, with five contrasting variations. The theme also starts on a descending minor sixth, but on the third degree and in minor. The next to last variation is a fugue on a theme that’s an inversion of the opening intervals of the movement. By the end of the work, the opening descending augmented fifth is transformed into an ascending major sixth.

The Quintet for Horn and Strings opens with a proclamation of a descending perfect fourth. That interval, as well as the ascending minor ninth of the main theme, are dual poles around which each of the work’s three movements is structured. Those intervals also structure the intimate main theme of the Adagio movement. The slow introduction to the last movement of the Quintet for horn and Strings opens with a dissonant minor ninth. A rousing Rondo follows.