Cherry Juliana Sudartono
HUM 101.1359
Professor Hamilton
Concert Report #1
Sudartono, 1.
Manhattan School of Music String Orchestra
Quartet in E minor by Giuseppe Verdi
Robert Mann, Conductor
Conductor, composer and also violinist Robert Mann is the founder and the first
violinist of the renowned Julliard String Quartet. He has been the driving force, someone
who brought a refreshing sense of adventure and discovery of the world of chamber
music for more than 50 years.
Born in 1920, Portland, Oregon, Mr. Mann started studying to play violin at the
age of nine and at the tender age of 13, he was accepted into the class of the
concertmaster of Portland Symphony, Edouard Hurlimann. At 18, he moved to New
York City in which he enrolled into Julliard. He won the prestigious Naumburg
Competition in 1941 and two days after the attack on Pearl Harbor he made his New
York debut. Shortly after graduation from Julliard however, he was sent into the army.
In 1946, at the invitation of the then Julliard’s president, William Schuman,
Robert Mann formed the Julliard String Quartet and has been the ensemble’s first
violinist until his retirement. The Quartet has played approximately 5000 concerts and
performed more than 600 works. It has three Grammy awards under their belt to date.
Mr. Mann has written more than 30 works for narrator and music and often
performed with his wife, actress Lucy Rowan. Renowned artists such as Dimitri
Mitropoulos, The New York Philharmonic, the Vienna philharmonic, Itzhak Perlman,
Joel Krosnick, Gilbert Kalish, and the LaSalle and Concord String Quartets have
performed his composition. Mr. Mann has also conducted throughout his professional
Sudartono, 2.
Career. He has lead concerts at Tanglewood and conducted for the New York Chamber
Symphony in a series of summer concert. He was always invited each summer to attend
Japan’s Saito Kinen Music Festival. Nowadays he is on the faculty of the Julliard School
and teaches regularly at Tanglewood. He is a mentor and a driving force for a lot of
budding young generation of string players.
Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) finished the Quartet in E minor by January 1873, at
the time; he only considered this as a private collection and did not published it until
1877 when it first appeared in public. This piece’s style is secular and was of romance
period. This piece was arranged for string orchestra by conductor Robert Mann.
The piece started with a slow melody, creating a mysterious feeling. I managed to
notice that the meter of this piece is 4/4. I feel as though the song’s melody was easy and
fun, and not complicated and hard to understand. The song then goes into crescendo,
slowly building up the momentum, until its peak, where you could feel a merry and
jumpy feel to the music. After diminuendo – the slow decreasing of volume to the
melody, violin 1 and violin 2 began to play in unison. Creating a soft tone, that made me
visualize about the wind. When they are playing in a fast tempo, it’s as if the wind is hard
and strong. And when the violin and viola are playing either polyphonic or homophonic
and in a slow tempo, I imagined that the wind has turned into breeze. There is one part in
where, the tempo was slow, but the rhythm was still maintained by the cellos, that I
started to imagine as if the wind was softly caressing two lovers. And when the
momentum build up again, it’s as if the wind is overshadowing the lovers’ fight against a
Sudartono, 3.
sorcerer. The fight was shown with high pitch notes and each note was pressured giving
a feel of tension.
As said, the texture of the piece was simple and not complicated. It is also
melodramatic as in it’s full of dramatic stories. The instrumentation of this orchestra is
only based on the strings family, that is the violin, viola, cello and bass. There are a total
of 20 violinists playing the violin that are divided into two groups of ten. Seven artists are
playing the viola, while there are 10 cellists playing the cello and last but not least 8
bassists are responsible of the basses. There are no vocals in this ensemble and there is no
use of electric musical instruments. There is a feel of chamber music to the orchestra too.
In a way I think that there could be more depth to the colour of the piece if it has been a
full orchestra. If it has been a full orchestra, more feelings and depths could be added to
this great piece. However, all in all, I enjoyed watching the concert because I now have
more knowledge of the music that I was listening to.