Schubert's Winterreise
Sun, Jan 24, 2027, 5:00 pm
Alice Tully Hall
2 hours, including intermission
Poignant string quartet miniatures, the last in the genre by both Haydn and Mendelssohn, set the stage for one of Schubert’s Winterreise. Finished during the composer’s final year, the song cycle follows a wanderer who, in the great Romantic tradition, searches in vain for the unattainable. As he trudges through snow and ice, his sanity leaves him as he talks to crows, trees, and finally, a barefoot hurdy-gurdy player, whom he asks to accompany his songs. Indeed, in the end, the wanderer appears to be Schubert himself.
Program
Joseph Haydn
(1732–1809)Quartet in D minor for Strings, Hob. III:83, Op. 103
(1803)Felix Mendelssohn
(1809–1847)Andante and Scherzo for String Quartet, Op. 81
(1847)Franz Schubert
(1797–1828)Winterreise for Voice and Piano, D. 911, Op. 89
(1827)
Matthew Polenzani
Ken Noda
Viano Quartet
American tenor Matthew Polenzani is lauded as one of the most gifted and distinguished lyric tenors of his generation. In the 2024–25 season he will make a role debut as Maurizio in Adriana Lecouvreur at Teatro Real, and bring his acclaimed portrayal of Pinkerton in Madama Butterfly to Gran Teatre del Liceu. Returning to the Metropolitan Opera, he will star as Rodolfo in La Bohème, and will take on the role of Anatol in concert performances of Samuel Barber’s Vanessa at the Kennedy Center with the National Symphony Orchestra under Gianandrea Noseda. This season he also appears in major titular roles, including Werther at Wiener Staatsoper, Otello at Staatsoper Stuttgart, and Idomeneo at San Francisco Opera. On the concert stage, he will offer recitals at the Hungarian State Opera and Oper Frankfurt. Polenzani was the recipient of the 2004 Richard Tucker Award, The Metropolitan Opera’s 2008 Beverly Sills Artist Award, and a 2017 Opera News Award.
Ken Noda is Musical Advisor to the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program. He has been a coach and teacher at the Met since 1991. He is also a guest coach at the Verbier Festival, Salzburg Mozartwoche, and Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute. He has performed with CMS since 1989. Born in New York to Japanese parents in 1962, Mr. Noda worked as a solo pianist in the 1980s with Zubin Mehta, Seiji Ozawa, Claudio Abbado, Daniel Barenboim, Riccardo Chailly, Rafael Kubelik, James Levine, and André Previn with such orchestras as the Berlin, Vienna, New York, Israel, and Los Angeles Philharmonics; the London, Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco Symphonies; the Cleveland Orchestra; and Orchestre de Paris. He has performed chamber music with Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zukerman, Lynn Harrell, and Nigel Kennedy, Cho-Liang Lin, and the Emerson Quartet. As a vocal accompanist, he has collaborated with Kathleen Battle, Hildegard Behrens, Maria Ewing, Aprile Millo, Kurt Moll, James Morris, Jessye Norman, Matthew Polenzani, Frederica von Stade, and Dawn Upshaw. He worked closely from the 1990s to 2010s with Marilyn Horne and Renata Scotto at their invitations as a faculty member in their training programs for young singers.
Praised for their “virtuosity, visceral expression, and rare unity of intention” (Boston Globe), the Viano Quartet has quickly soared to international acclaim as one of the most dynamic and in-demand string quartets of their generation. Winners of the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant in 2025, the ensemble has captivated audiences worldwide ever since they were awarded First Prize at the 13th Banff International String Quartet Competition, with appearances at renowned venues such as Lincoln Center, Berlin’s Konzerthaus, Toronto’s Koerner Hall, Hong Kong’s City Hall, and London’s Wigmore Hall. The Viano Quartet are members of CMS’s Bowers Program from 2024 to 2027.
Highlights of the Quartet’s 2025–26 season include debut performances at London’s Southbank Centre, the Frick Collection in New York, Dublin’s National Concert Hall, Coast Live Music, Friends of Chamber Music Kansas City, Apex Concerts, the Amelia Island Chamber Music Festival, the Fortas Series at the Kennedy Center, Premiere Performances HK, and a mainstage full recital debut at CMS. The quartet also makes return appearances at Stanford Live, Forte Chamber Music, the Beaches Fine Arts Series, the Buffalo Chamber Music Society’s Slee Series (for the second half of their Beethoven cycle), Chamber Music Albuquerque, and the Sanibel Music Festival. The Quartet looks forward to visiting residencies this season at Stanford University through the St. Lawrence Legacy Series, the University of Victoria, Music in the Morning in Vancouver, and the Auditorium Chamber Music Series at the University of Idaho. This season also features collaborations with mandolinist Avi Avital, pianist Sir Stephen Hough, pianist Gilbert Kalish, clarinetist Anthony McGill, guitarist Miloš Karadaglic, and singer-songwriter Vienna Teng.
Equally committed to both beloved masterworks and contemporary repertoire, the Viano Quartet actively collaborates with today’s leading composers, including Sir Stephen Hough, Kevin Lau, Chris Rogerson, and Caroline Shaw. They are set to premiere a newly written string quartet by Indian-American composer Reena Esmail in the summer of 2026. Their first full-length album, Voyager, was released in summer 2025 with Apple Music/Platoon Records, and features Beethoven’s Op. 130 alongside Alistair Coleman’s Moonshot. Their debut EP Portraits was released in 2023 as one of the first albums to be launched on the Curtis Studio label, featuring works by Schubert, Florence Price, Tchaikovsky, and Ginastera.
The Viano Quartet was formed in Los Angeles at the Colburn Conservatory of Music in 2015. Each member of the quartet is grateful for the unwavering support from their mentors at the Curtis Institute and Colburn Conservatory, including members of the Dover, Guarneri, and Tokyo string quartets.