Celebrated violinist Glenn Dicterow is well known to New York audiences as the concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic. But those who attend his concert on the Daniel Saidenburg Faculty Recital Series on May 1 in the Juilliard Theater will have the chance to share in another aspect of his musical life as he is joined by his colleagues from the Lyric Piano Quartet for a varied and unusual program of chamber music.

The Lyric Piano Quartet (clockwise from left): Gerald Robbins, Glenn Dicterow, Fred Zlotkin, and Karen Dreyfus. (Photo by Christian Steiner)

As the pianist of this ensemble, I can say that it has been a pleasure making music and maintaining a comradeship with this remarkable man throughout the years—not only here in New York, but as far back as our childhood, having grown up together in California. We often got together to play chamber music at our homes in Los Angeles. With Glenn on the violin, cellist Frederick Zlotkin, and me at the piano, we had the privilege of experiencing the musical advice of the likes of Jascha Heifetz, William Primrose, Gregor Piatigorsky, and the Slatkin family. (This included the violinist-conductor Felix Slatkin and cellist Eleanor Aller—both parents of conductor Leonard Slatkin and Frederick, who later changed his surname back to Zlotkin to reflect the family's original spelling and pronunciation.) It was in the Dicterow household that we received coaching and encouragement from Glenn's father, Harold (principal second violinist of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra) and his mother, Irina (a fine pianist). Together with the participation of his accomplished violinist-physician brother, Maurice, we experienced the exhilaration of those first joyful times of making music together, sharing our artistic ideas, emotions, and instrumental skills.

Our paths diverged for university studies—Glenn and Frederick attended Juilliard and I studied at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles—and our careers took a number of turns before eventually bringing us back together in New York. Glenn served as concertmaster in the Los Angeles Philharmonic from the early 1970s to 1979, and has been in that position with the New York Philharmonic since 1980. Zlotkin went on to serve as principal cellist in the New York City Ballet Orchestra from 1971.

Violist Karen Dreyfus experienced much the same background and chamber music opportunities in her native Philadelphia, with her father being a violinist in the Philadelphia Orchestra and her mother an opera singer and coach. It was on the basis of friendship that Glenn and Karen organized the Lyric Piano Quartet in 1987, which brought me back to the States from my residence in London with a mutual commitment to co-found our group with them and cellist James Kreger, also a Juilliard faculty member, mutual childhood friend, and chamber-music mate in L.A. After James left the group in 1997 to pursue other commitments, Fred Zlotkin joined our ensemble, which, by then, had established itself as a group committed to focusing on lyrical Romantic chamber music, familiar and neglected. That old sense of delightful camaraderie that characterized our youthful musical times together remains today.

The May 1 concert is not a typical violin recital of sonatas and short pieces; instead, the program is a kaleidoscope of concert works that were recently either performed live by Glenn and Fred with orchestra, or recorded on CD by Glenn and Karen. It includes the Sibelius Six Humoresques for violin and orchestra (in a reduction for violin and piano); Rozsa's Sinfonia Concertante for violin, cello, and orchestra (also in piano reduction); the Martinu Madrigals for violin and viola; and the Schumann Piano Quartet. It is a varied program that offers opportunities for the listener to hear neglected and familiar works, both romantic and contemporary, in a more harmonically traditional vein.

The Six Humoresques were written in 1919 when Jean Sibelius was 54, some 16 years after he had written his hugely popular Violin Concerto. Sibelius described this work as "the anguish of existence... fitfully lit up by the sun." They are a series of gypsy-like contrasting mood pictures that are reflective, elegant, charming, and brilliant, in which Sibelius captures "the dancing soul of the violin."

Miklos Rozsa's Sinfonia Concertante for violin and cello was written in 1966 for violinist Jascha Heifetz and cellist Gregor Piatigorsky, to whom it was dedicated. Rozsa was 59 at the time and already celebrated for some of the finest film music ever written for Hollywood, including his scores to the films Spellbound, Double Life, and Ben Hur. The Hungarian-born composer came to the United States after his initial successes in his homeland as a serious composer, and his works began appearing on European and American orchestral programs. His film work solidified his popularity, but he continued to write orchestral and chamber music at the same time. The Sinfonia Concertante exudes Rozsa's penchant for a native Magyar peasant folk style, with its driving rhythms, exhilarating energy, pungent modal-pentatonic harmony, and warm, melodic lyricism.

Bohuslav Martinu composed his Madrigals for violin and viola in 1947 at age 57 in New York, for Joseph and Lillian Fuchs (both of whom taught at Juilliard for many years). Martinu was a Czech émigré to the United States. Fleeing Nazi persecution, he first settled in Paris, where he came under the influences of Debussy, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, and Roussel (his teacher), as well as the works of Copland and the jazz generation. He arrived in the U.S. in 1941. In a 1942 American radio interview, Martinu stated his artistic credo: "In my music, I have been influenced most of all by the national music of Czechoslovakia, Debussy, and, in particular, by English madrigals which attracted me with their freedom of polyphony, which I found very different from that of Bach." The textural interplay combines with Czech folkloristic elements, drone effects, evocative "night-music" suggesting birds and insects, and a dance-like character to give the work its rich tapestry and justify its heading as a set of madrigals.

A feature of Robert Schumann's compositional growth was a tendency to concentrate on particular musical genres that interested him at any particular moment. For example, from 1830-40 (between ages 20 and 30), he wrote most of his greatest music for solo piano, including Carnaval, Davidsbündlertanze, Phantasiestücke, Kreisleriana, Études Symphoniques, and the C-Major Fantasy, among many others. (In fact, his first 20 opus numbers were for the piano.) Then, in 1840, he turned to the song as his métier. Finally, in 1842 (at age 32), he focused on chamber music (although he had tried his hand at writing two piano quartets at age 18 and 21). During this remarkable year, he wrote three string quartets, the Piano Quintet, and the Piano Quartet in the space of six months. Mozart and particularly Beethoven were his creative inspirations, especially in the realm of chamber music. "I love Mozart dearly," Schumann wrote in his diary, "but Beethoven I worship like a god who remains forever apart who will never become one with us." Schumann demanded from himself the artistic principles of these great composers, aiming to create a bond between creator, interpreter, and listener. He wanted his music to express poetic profundity while demonstrating a perfection of form and structure and, at the same time, offering originality in rhythmic, harmonic, and melodic ideas. With the Piano Quartet, he succeeds on all levels.

It remains to say only that we welcome you to join Glenn Dicterow and his guests, the Lyric Piano Quartet, in recital at the Juilliard Theater on May 1. Free tickets are required for this concert, and may be obtained beginning April 10 at the Juilliard Box Office.

Pianist Gerald Robbins and his colleagues in the Lyric Piano Quartet are in residence at Queens College, CUNY. Robbins, who also teaches chamber music at Manhattan School of Music, appears regularly as a soloist with major orchestras and has made numerous recordings.