Contrappunto Frizzante

Contrappunto Frizzante
Mendelssohn Chamber Music for Strings
Educational Project and Concerts in collaboration with
NYU Steinhardt and Scuola di Musica di Fiesole

Second Concert
Octet

On Contrappunto Frizzante
This collaboration between NYU Casa Italiana, Scuola di Musica di Fiesole, and NYU Steinhardt String Studies brings together student quartets from Italy and the U.S. for an opportunity to share musical insights and deepen their artistry. Through rehearsals, masterclasses, and performances of Mendelssohn’s quartets and octet, students will explore different musical traditions under the guidance of esteemed instructors. This project offers a vibrant educational experience, combining cultural perspectives and the pure joy of playing together, while strengthening connections between the institutions involved.

Program:

Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (1809-1847)
String Octet in E-flat major, Op. 20 (1825)
I. Allegro moderato ma con fuoco
II. Adagio non lento
III. Intermezzo. Allegretto con moto – Allegro di molto
IV. Presto – Adagio non lento
[35 mins]

Kantor Quartet + Okhyroe Quartet
Logan Chiang, violin
Michelangelo Nuti, violin
Jillian Johnson, violin
Giulio Zanobini, violin
Orlando Bandini Viliani, viola
Arianna Patelli, viola
Cindy Chen, cello
Filippo Torriti, cello

Introduced by
Harvey Sachs
Music historian
Curtis Institute of Music

About the performers:
The Kantor Quartet (Michelangelo Nuti, violin; Giulio Zanobini, violin – substitute; Arianna Patelli, viola; Filippo Torriti, cello), comprised of students at the Scuola di Musica di Fiesole, has formed in 2024 under the guidance of Francesca Piccioni, Clara Franziska Schötensack, and Giorgio Casati (Lyskamm Quartet). In its early months of activity, the Kantor Quartet has already been recognized as a promising chamber ensemble, performing at key events associated with the school and being invited to the seasons of the Accademia del Disegno in Florence and the Centro Arte Vito Frazzi. In June the Kantor Quartet will debut at the Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino.
The Okhyroe [/oʊˈkɪroʊ.iː/] Quartet (Logan Chiang, violin; Jillian Johnson, violin; Orlando Bandini Viliani, viola; Cindy Chen, cello) is a newly born string formation at NYU Steinhardt, where all members are pursuing higher degrees in instrumental performance. The quartet is guided in their studies by Melissa White (Harlem Quartet). The group enjoys dialogic work throughout their rehearsal sessions in aim of a musical fair representation of all members’ different perspectives, backgrounds and ideas. This project will be Okhyroe Quartet’s debut.

Harvey Sachs, writer and music historian, published his twelfth book in 2023 Schoenberg: Why He Matters, issued by Liveright. His other books include Toscanini, Musician of Conscience, Ten Masterpieces of Music, Virtuoso, Music in Fascist Italy, Rubinstein: A Life, Reflections on Toscanini, The Ninth: Beethoven and the Year 1824, and, as co-author, Plácido Domingo’s My First Forty Years and Sir Georg Solti’s Memoirs. He also edited and translated The Letters of Arturo Toscanini. He has written for the New Yorker, New York Times, Times Literary Supplement of London, La Stampa, Il Sole-24 Ore, and many other publications, as well as for radio and television. He is on the faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia; gives lectures at universities and cultural institutions worldwide; and has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. He lived in Europe – mainly in Italy – for over thirty years and was Artistic Director of the Società del Quartetto di Milano.

A Guide to the Listening through Poetry

Giosuè Carducci
San Martino (in Maremma Pisana) (1883)

La nebbia a gl’irti colli
piovigginando sale,
e sotto il maestrale
urla e biancheggia il mar;

ma per le vie del borgo
dal ribollir de’ tini
va l’aspro odor de i vini
l’anime a rallegrar.

Gira su’ ceppi accesi
lo spiedo scoppiettando:
sta il cacciator fischiando
su l’uscio a rimirar

tra le rossastre nubi
stormi d’uccelli neri
com’esuli pensieri,
nel vespero migrar.

* * * * *

Above the rising mist
The ragged hills are lined
Under the lash of the wind
Howls the whitening sea;
But thro’ the life of the town
Comes the harsh smell of the wine
Of boiling vats the sign
To rejoice the soul of me.

Over the burning logs
Turns the cracking spit once more;
The hunter stops at the door
To whistle and gaze and sing.

Across the reddening clouds
Dark flocks of birds are flying
As exiled thoughts come sighing
Home in the evening.

Translated by Laura Fullerton Gilbert (1916)

Giosuè Carducci wrote this poem in the autumn of 1883, likely while traveling through the Tuscan countryside on his way to Rome. We’d like to use our reading of it as a listening guide for tonight’s concert and as an introduction to the collaborative project that Casa Italiana has undertaken with NYU Steinhardt and the Scuola di Musica di Fiesole.
What stands out most to us in San Martino is its vivid sensory detail. Carducci doesn’t just describe a village scene; he makes the reader experience it. You can almost smell the pungent aroma of fermenting wine, hear the quiet bubbling of the vats, and—freeing our imagination—catch the distant sounds of village life: children running, voices chatting, and the warmth of a community coming alive, out of a few carefully chosen words.
The bubbling exuberance that has awakened San Martino’s streets finds its echo in tonight’s music. Mendelssohn’s compositions presented tonight, written before he even turned twenty, are full of that same sense of fermenting motion: light, effervescent, sparkling rhythmic vitality.
At the same time, Carducci’s portrayal of nature surrounding human life in the other stanzas evokes the depth of emotion that Mendelssohn expresses in his slower movements, where lyricism takes center stage.
The vibrancy where vitality and emotion intertwine is at the heart of Contrappunto Frizzante, the educational project and concert mini-series of which tonight’s performance is part of. Through a partnership between two prestigious music schools – Scuola di Musica di Fiesole and NYU Steinhardt String Studies – Contrappunto Frizzante presents music that mirrors not only the inner world of its composer but also that of its young performers. Like Mendelssohn when he wrote these pieces, they stand at a moment of artistic growth, self-discovery, and youthful intensity. Their interpretation, shaped by both instinct and growing artistic awareness, is naturally intertwined with the music, as they, like Mendelssohn at the time of its creation, find themselves at that phase in life.
The image of the borgo’s joyful excitement, captured in the effervescence of the wine vats, also speaks to the essence of community. In San Martino, Carducci uses the bubbling liquid to evoke the spirit of village life—shared pleasures, conversation, and a deep sense of belonging. Here, humanity is not portrayed as solitary or isolated, as poets often depict sorrow, but as something that flourishes in togetherness. Happiness is to be shared.
In the same way, making music together is a shared celebration—especially when it brings together musicians from different traditions, creating a space for exchange, inspiration, and collective creativity. This energy, this communal “boiling over,” mirrors the counterpoint in Mendelssohn’s music, where voices are harmonized in a balance of structure and spontaneity.
Finally, as Mendelssohn built his music on the foundation of the classical masters before him, Carducci’s poetry is rooted in literary traditions of the past. Some literary critics even argue that San Martino is a reworking of earlier texts—particularly Gli amori in servitù, written by Ippolito Nievo fifty years earlier. But in both cases, what they create is transfiguration rather than repetition. Mendelssohn takes classical forms and reshapes them into something fresh, personal, and intuitive—music that still today captivates listeners of all backgrounds. Likewise, Carducci, through his structured neoclassicism, offers images that feel genuine, vivid, and rich, allowing us, in reading his verses, to experience great music itself.

Orlando Bandini Viliani
MM NYU Steinhardt ‘26
BM Scuola di Musica di Fiesole ‘24
BPhil Università di Firenze ‘22