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Program notes by Eric Bromberger

Italian Serenade
HUGO WOLF
Born March 13, 1860, Windischgraz
Died February 22, 1803, Vienna

Hugo Wolf’s reputation rests on his songs, but throughout his brief creative career (he died at 43 in a mental hospital) he dreamed of composing large-scale works. In 1887, at age 27, Wolf composed–in the space of three days–a movement for string quartet that he called simply Serenade. Three years later, he added the word “Italian” to that title, apparently as an act of homage to a land of warmth and sunny spirits, and in 1892 he arranged the Serenade for a small orchestra of pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns, and strings (there is also a prominent role for solo viola in the orchestral version). Wolf later planned to add three further movements to make his Italian Serenade a full-scale orchestral work, but these came to nothing. Trapped by frequent periods of creative sterility and–increasingly–by periods of mental instability, he could make no progress on these movements, which survive only as fragmentary sketches.

The one completed movement of the Serenade, however, has become one of Wolf’s most frequently performed and recorded works. Some commentators have taken the title quite literally: they claim to hear in this music an actual serenade sung by a young man to his love on a balcony above. They cite the opening pizzicatos as the sound of a guitar being tuned and hear the voice of the young man in the earnest cello and the voice of the young woman in reply.

It is quite possible to enjoy the music without knowing any of this (or searching for it in the music). The Italian Serenade is in rondo form, set at a very brisk tempo–Wolf marks it Ausserst lebhaft (“Extremely fast”)–yet the music manages both to be very fast and to project an easy, almost languorous, atmosphere throughout. Wolf marks individual episodes “tender,” “fiery,” and “passionate” as this music flows smoothly to its quiet close.

“The Canadian” program note by Liam James Wade

String Quartet No. 2 “The Canadian”
LIAM JAMES WADE
Born 1978, Bellingham, Washington

String Quartet No. 2 “The Canadian” was composed in February 2008 and depicts the adventures of the Cecilia String Quartet in their travels around the world.

The playful character of the first movement, marked Andante ritmico, results from the conversational give-and-take of syncopated sixteenth notes between players. Superimposed over this lively accompaniment, each player takes a turn playing his or her own rendition of the piece’s octatonic and somewhat bluesy main theme. This movement depicts my first meeting with the Cecilia Quartet after their performance at Lincoln Center in 2007, and our subsequent walk to the Pomodoro Rosso restaurant in New York’s Upper West Side.

The second movement, Instrumental Endangerment, takes its name from a review of the Cecilia String Quartet’s performance of Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 10 at the Melbourne International Chamber Music competition in Australia. My inspiration for this movement was the commanding presence of this ensemble and the passion and intensity of this Australian performance. I would describe this movement as one part Vivaldi, two parts Shostakovich, with a dash of Schnittke. It accelerates to an exciting double climax before giving way to the third movement, Waltz. The love song at the heart of this piece is reminiscent of the lyrical style of Lennon/McCartney.

The fourth movement, Tango, connects directly to the final movement, Lento espressivo, by way of a cadenza in the second violin. This transition is modeled on a similar transition between movements in Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 15. Tango recalls the fire and passion of the quartet’s Australian performances. Lento espressivo, the expansive finale, is a musical portrait of the quartet set in mountains of Aspen, Colorado. Each player restates the main theme from the first movement. The second violin cadenza literally depicts Min-Jeong Koh joining the quartet in Aspen. The piece winds down to a canon for cello and first violin over a sub-dominant pedal, finally coming to rest on one final Schubertian cadence.

String Quartet No. 3 in A Major, Opus 41
ROBERT SCHUMANN
Born June 8, 1810, Zwickau
Died July 29, 1856, Endenich

Schumann’s marriage to the young Clara Wieck in 1840 set off a great burst of creativity, and curiously he seemed to change genres by year: 1840 produced an outpouring of song, 1841 symphonic works, and 1842 chamber music. During the winter of 1842, Schumann had begun to think about composing string quartets; Clara was gone on a month-long concert tour to Copenhagen in April, and though he suffered an anxiety attack in her absence Schumann used that time to study the quartets of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. Clara’s return to Leipzig restored the composer’s spirits, and he quickly composed the three string quartets of his Opus 41 in June and July of that year; later that summer he wrote his Piano Quartet and Piano Quintet. Writing string quartets presented special problems for the pianist-composer. The string quartets are his only chamber works without piano, and–cut off from the familiar resources of his own instrument–he struggled to write just for strings. Though he returned to writing chamber music later in his career, Schumann never again wrote a string quartet.

The Quartet in A Major, quickly composed between July 8 and 22, is regarded as the finest of the set and shows many of those original touches that mark Schumann’s best music. The first movement opens with a very brief (seven-measure) slow introduction marked Andante espressivo. The first violin’s falling fifth at the very beginning will become the thematic “seed” for much of the movement: that same falling fifth opens the main theme at the Allegro molto moderato and also appears as part of the second subject, introduced by the cello over syncopated accompaniment. Schumann’s markings for these two themes suggest the character of the movement: sempre teneramente (“always tenderly”) and espressivo. Schumann’s procedures in this movement are a little unusual: the development treats only the first theme, and the second does not reappear until the recapitulation. The movement fades into silence on the cello’s pianissimo falling fifth.

The second movement brings more originality. Marked Assai agitato (“Very agitated”), it is a theme-and-variation movement, but with a difference: it begins cryptically–with an off-the-beat main idea in 3/8 meter–and only after three variations does Schumann present the actual theme, now marked Un poco Adagio. A further variation and flowing coda bring the movement to a quiet close. The Adagio molto opens peacefully with the soaring main idea in the first violin. More insistent secondary material arrives over dotted rhythms, and the music grows harmonically complex before pulsing dotted rhythms draw the movement to a close.

Out of the quiet, the rondo-finale bursts to life with a main idea so vigorous that it borders on the aggressive. This is an unusually long movement. Contrasting interludes (including a lovely, Bach-like gavotte) provide relief along the way, but the insistent dotted rhythms of the rondo tune always return to pound their way into a listener’s consciousness and finally to propel the quartet to its exuberant close.

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