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Violinist Rhiannon Banerdt of the Ulysses Quartet steps in for Dana Kelley for the final preconcert talk of the 2025-2026 Season.
Sunday, April 26th at 12:30p.m.
66 W. 12th Street, 4th Floor
Rhiannon will introduce the works to be performed by the Katarina and Ulysses Quartets at 2pm
[concert requires separate ticket purchase]
Franz Joseph Haydn: String Quartet in C Major, Op. 50, No. 2 (1787)
Vivian Fung: String Quartet No. 5 "Spiraling" (2022)—New York City Premiere
Felix Mendelssohn: Octet in E-flat, Op. 20 (1825)—with members of the Ulysses Quartet
This event is part of the Schneider Concerts 2025-26 season — 6 mainstage concerts featuring exceptional emerging ensembles, plus pre-concert talks, livestreams, and free short programs at community partner venues.
Explore the season here.
Presented by New School Concerts
$90: 6-concert season ticket
(includes livestreams for days you can't attend in person)
$20: general admission
$17: seniors and those with disabilities
$5: student stand-by
(available with presentation of student ID at box office on the day of the concert)
$5 - preconcert talk (not included with concert ticket)
$0-$20: simultaneous online broadcast (registration required)
New School students, faculty, and staff: Use your N# to register for a single, non-transferrable, free ticket. You will be asked to present New School ID upon entry to event.
Seats are not assigned and physical tickets will not be mailed. You will receive email confirmation and we will check in registered ticket holders at the venue starting one hour before the concert.
The Auditorium at 66 W. 12th Street address is accessible
step-free to the lobby and entry-level auditorium.
Large print programs and assistive listening devices available without advance request.
A wheelchair accessible unisex restroom is located on the lobby level; additional accessible restrooms are available on the 4th floor. Other bathroom facilities use steps for access.
Seats are not assigned. Use a wheelchair, a walker, or have other seating requirement? Please reserve accessible seating at time of ticket purchase so we can ensure you get the set you need.
Note that walkers cannot be left in theater aisles and theater representatives may be unable to assist patrons to their seats, so it is best for those with walkers to keep that in mind and make any needed seating requests at time of ticket purchase.
Requests for additional accommodations can be made at time of ticket purchase.
Recently appointed associate principal viola of the National Symphony, Dana has been a member of the Orchestra of St. Luke's and Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and performed as guest principal viola of the Santa Fe Opera Orchestra and as a member of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. Praised for her rich and beautiful tone, Dana has been a top prizewinner in the Sphinx Music Competition, the Irving M. Klein International String Competition, the M-Prize Chamber Arts Competition and the Concert Artists Guild Victor Elmaleh Competition. She is a former member of the Argus String Quartet. She serves on the viola faculty of the Mannes School of Music at The New School.
Dana received an Artist Diploma in String Quartet Studies with the Argus Quartet as the 2017-2019 Graduate Quartet in Residence at The Juilliard School. Dana was a 2014-2016 Fellow in Ensemble Connect - a performance and teaching program of Carnegie Hall, The Juilliard School, and The Weill Music Institute. She received her Bachelor’s of Music from the Blair School of Music at Vanderbilt University, and completed her Master’s of Music degree as student of Kim Kashkashian’s at the New England Conservatory.
Founded at The New School in 1957 as New School Concerts with the mission to offer outstanding, affordable chamber music, the series was renamed in 1993 to honor its founding artistic director, Alexander “Sasha” Schneider—violinist, conductor, and member of the Budapest String Quartet.
The Schneider Concerts commitment to accessible, excellent chamber music still is anchored in affordable pricing, but now also includes support for early-career artists, outreach to older New Yorkers, and a strong commitment to accessibility and inclusion. The series now actively welcomes artists and audiences from all backgrounds, with programming that honors and celebrates tradition and embraces innovation.
Director Rohana Elias-Reyes is supported by an music advisory committee of esteemed musicians: John Dalley, Pamela Frank, Jaime Laredo, Cho-Liang Lin, Anthony McGill, Kurt Muroki, Tara O’Connor, and Arnold Steinhardt.
Notable series alumni who made debuts and early career appearances on the series include Peter Serkin, Yo-Yo Ma, and the Guarneri, Dover, and Calidore string quartets. More recently, we've presented the New York debuts of the Viano, Balourdet, Isidore, and Ivalas string quartets.
At last, Beethoven felt ready to enter the weighty string quartet medium and offer his first set of quartets for publication in 1801. Interestingly, the first quartet he wrote chronologically is known to us as Op. 18 No. 3, in D Major, and this F Major Quartet, written second, was placed at the beginning of the set. Whether or not this was an intentional choice, the piece presents rather well what the rest of this set and the later works would end up featuring: a radical evolution of the quartet medium he inherited from the reins of Haydn and Mozart. This was all a product of Beethoven’s painstaking and probing working process unsurpassed by any composer before or since.
The work begins with a fragment of a melody played in unison, followed by a mysterious silence. The fragment returns, more searchingly into another silence, only to be completed in a classical phrase structure. Immediately, there is another surprise as the phrase repeats as a forte outburst. The motive that comprises the opening phrase is a monorhythm which repeats in the movement literally hundreds of times, yet much like Beethoven’s future Fifth Symphony, its effect only enhances the energy and drama of the work. The first forte outburst serves as the precursor of many sudden dynamic contrasts, the motive acting as the thread stringing the music tightly together through all upheavals.
An early draft of this quartet which Beethoven sent to his trusted friend, violinist and theologian Karl Amenda, is a unique vantage point into Beethoven’s working process and coming of age. While the overall thematic structure remains the same as in the final version, the dizzying amount of detail-oriented changes the piece underwent is shocking to compare. The most important revelation from the earlier version is Beethoven’s clear handwritten indications that the pathos-laden and dramatic slow movement is meant to correspond to the events of the tomb scene from Romeo and Juliette. With this discovery, one can only wonder if other abstract instrumental compositions of Beethoven, an ardent Shakespeare reader, were also meant to have programmatic ties. However, this is the only such example from his whole output that is explicitly stated, and Beethoven felt as though his music should speak for itself in the listener’s imagination. Even without knowing any programmatic connections, this movement would have been most striking for a listener of the era, especially with the melodramatic climaxes and painfully pronounced pauses.
Following this Adagio, the last two movements serve largely as comic relief, with an especially virtuosic violin passage in the Scherzo’s trio catapulting the energy to a feverish height. The mood returns to playfulness throughout the satisfying finale movement, culminating in a jolly bon voyage tune combined with the main theme at the close.
String Quartet No. 5 “Spiraling” was written as a reflection on the tumultuous year that was 2021. With a relentless series of local and international incidents, including the storming of the Capitol, widening political divisions, and culture wars; forests burning throughout the western United States, Canada, Brazil, and Australia; coups and assassinations in Afghanistan, Myanmar, and Haiti; and new and ever more virulent COVID variations, the list continued to spiral out of control as the year went on and took a tremendous emotional toll on me. It seemed that the only constant in our world was change, continual change.
Reflecting that continual change, the quartet is a tour de force work in one movement that is constantly moving and morphing from one figure to the next, often spiraling in circular motions repeating patterns of arpeggios or chords. Like a musical kaleidoscope, the quartet uses one motive from the very beginning but it weaves in and out in different colors and emotions, from the angst-filled beginning, through a more gentle transition with use of harmonics as color, to a playful section that is sporadic and eventually grooves to a beat. In addition to the opening motivic figure, a central melodic idea permeates the piece and closes the piece as a lament, filled with both sorrow and hope as it seeks to reassure.
- Vivian Fung
Thank you to our audience, Jessie Montgomery, The New School, the Schneider Concert Series, and the New England Conservatory for allowing us to perform for you today. It is a pleasure to play these works and a very special occasion to perform “Strum” by the Mannes School of Music’s newest violin and composition faculty member, Jessie Montgomery.
— Notes by the Balourdet String Quartet, except where otherwise noted.
Cho-Liang Lin was born in Taiwan. A neighbor’s violin studies convinced this 5-year old boy to do the same. At the age twelve, he moved to Sydney to further his studies with Robert Pikler, a student of Jenő Hubay. After playing for Itzhak Perlman in a master class, the 13-year old boy decided that he must study with Mr. Perlman’s teacher, Dorothy DeLay. At the age fifteen, Lin traveled alone to New York and auditioned for the Juilliard School and spent the next six years working with Ms DeLay.
A concert career was launched in 1980 with Lin’s debut playing the Mendelssohn Concerto with the New York Philharmonic and Zubin Mehta . He has since performed as soloist with virtually every major orchestra in the world. His busy schedule on stage around the world continues to this day. However, his wide ranging interests have led him to diverse endeavors. At the age of 31, his alma mater, Juilliard School, invited Lin to become faculty. In 2006, he was appointed professor at Rice University. He is currently music director of La Jolla SummerFest and the Hong Kong International Chamber Music Festival. Ever so keen about education, he was music director of the Taiwan National Symphony music camp and youth orchestra for four years.
In his various professional capacities, Cho-Liang Lin has championed composers of our time. His efforts to commission new works have led a diverse field of composers to write for him. The list includes John Harbison, Christopher Rouse, Tan Dun, John Williams, Steven Stucky, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Bright Sheng, Paul Schoenfield, Lalo Schifrin, Joan Tower and many more. Recently, he was soloist with the New York Philharmonic, Detroit Symphony, Munich Philharmonic, Toronto Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony, Nashville Symphony and Royal Philharmonic. He is a member of the New School Concerts music advisory committee.
Lin performs on the 1715 Stradivari named “Titian” or a 2000 Samuel Zygmuntowicz. His many concerto, recital and chamber music recordings on Sony Classical, Decca, BIS, Delos and Ondine can be heard on Spotify or Naxos.com. His albums have won Gramophone Record Of The Year, Grammy nominations and Penguin Guide Rosettes.
Her profoundly felt works have been described as “turbulent, wildly colorful and exploding with life” (The Washington Post).
Her growing body of work includes solo, chamber, vocal, ballet, and orchestral works. Some recent highlights include Shift, Change, Turn… (2019) commissioned by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Passage (2019) a ballet commissioned by Dance Theatre of Harlem, Coincident Dances (2018) for the Chicago Sinfonietta, and Caught by the Wind (2016) for the Albany Symphony and the American Music Festival.
The New York Philharmonic has selected Montgomery as one of the featured composers for their Project 19, which marks the centennial of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, granting equal voting rights in the United States to women. Other forthcoming works include a cadenza for the Brahms Violin Concerto, to be premiered by Hilary Hahn; a cello concerto for Thomas Mesa jointly commissioned by Carnegie Hall, New World Symphony, and The Sphinx Organization; and a new orchestral work for the National Symphony.
A founding member of PUBLIQuartet and recent member of the Catalyst Quartet, she continues to maintain an active performance career as a violinist appearing regularly with her improvising duo Big dog little dog with bassist Eleonore Oppenheim.
Montgomery’s teachers and mentors include Sally Thomas, Ann Setzer, Alice Kanack, Joan Tower, Derek Bermel, Mark Suozzo, Ira Newborn, and Laura Kaminsky. She holds degrees from the Juilliard School and New York University and is currently a Graduate Fellow in Music Composition at Princeton University. Montgomery is on both the composition and violin faculty at Mannes.