Program notes by Eric Bromberger

Contrapunctus I from The Art of the Fugue, BWV 1080
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
Born March 21, 1685, Eisenach, Germany
Died July 28, 1750, Leipzig

About 1740 Bach became interested in exploring the contrapuntal possibilities bound up within one theme. In 1747 came one of the most famous signs of this interest. On a visit to Berlin, Bach played before Frederick the Great, who in turn gave Bach a theme and asked him to extemporize a six-part fugue on it. Bach improvised a three-part fugue for Frederick on the spot and then–back in Leipzig–took that “royal” theme through thirteen further contrapuntal extensions, which he presented to the King as A Musical Offering. But Bach’s interest in exploring the contrapuntal possibilities of a single theme extended well beyond the famous visit to Berlin in 1747, as the Goldberg Variations (1742) and the canonic variations Vom Himmel Hoch (1747) make clear. Evidence suggests that about 1740 Bach had begun a lengthy work consisting of a series of fugues and canons based on one theme. His work on this project continued across the decade, even during the years of his increasing blindness, and in fact the project would remain unfinished–at the time of his death on July 28, 1750, Bach was working on a triple fugue that was left incomplete. Bach had prepared the first eleven fugues for publication, and after his death all of the pieces based on this one theme were gathered by his son Carl Philipp Emanuel and published in the fall of 1751 under the name The Art of the Fugue, a title the composer probably never heard or imagined.

This evening’s program opens with Contrapunctus 1 from The Art of the Fugue (in this work Bach preferred the title Contrapunctus, or “counterpoint,” to Fugue). Bach’s fundamental theme seems simplicity itself: in D minor, it is only four measures long, and–even at its steady tempo–it gives the impression of increasing speed, as the half-notes of the opening measures give way to quarters in the third and to eighths in the final measure. Contrapunctus I introduces Bach’s fundamental fugue subject in its simplest form, worked out here without countertheme.

For which instruments did Bach write The Art of the Fugue? Bach himself left no indication in the score, and his manuscript seemed all the more complex (and forbidding) because he wrote the various voices not just in treble and bass clef but also in alto and tenor clef. As a result, some wondered whether he intended the music to be performed at all, and others believed that this music is frankly unplayable, intended only as theoretical exercises in complex counterpoint. We know today that The Art of the Fugue in fact can be performed, and it has been played and recorded on such instruments as harpsichord, piano, organ, string quartet, chamber orchestra, and symphony orchestra (as well as on many unexpected instruments, such as saxophone quartet). Perhaps it is better that Bach left no indication of the instrumentation he had in mind when he conceived this music–each time we hear this music performed by different instruments, we hear it realized in quite different ways. On this evening’s program, the Orion String Quartet performs the Contrapunctus 1 in an arrangement for string quartet by Samuel Baron.

Scherzo for Piano
CHARLES WUORINEN
Born June 9, 1938, New York City

Charles Wuorinen, who turns 72 later this spring, has led a varied career that has taken him throughout this country as composer, performer, conductor, teacher, lecturer, and composer-in-residence. Educated at Columbia University (B.A., 1961, M.A., 1963), Wuorinen has taught at Columbia, the Manhattan School of Music, and Rutgers, and he has been a visiting faculty member at others. While at Columbia, he co-founded (with Harvey Sollberger) the Group for Contemporary Music, one of the country’s leading new-music ensembles. Wuorinen has been composer-in-residence at the Ojai Festival (1975), the Cabrillo Music Festival (1985), Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival (1993), and with the San Francisco Symphony (1985-89). As a pianist or guest conductor, he has appeared with the New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, and many others. Wuorinen has composed for orchestra, chamber ensembles, keyboard, tape, and the voice, both solo songs and choral works. He has received numerous awards, principal among which have been the MacArthur Award and the Pulitzer Prize for music in 1970 (for Time’s Encomium, a composition for tape); at age 32, Wuorinen was the youngest composer ever to receive the Pulitzer. An extremely prolific composer, he has written several hundred works.

Wuorinen composed the Scherzo for Piano in 2007. The piece had been commissioned by the 92^nd Street Y in New York City specifically for Peter Serkin, and Serkin gave the first performance at the 92^nd Street Y on April 5, 2008, as part of a number of concerts that year marking the composer’s 70^th birthday. The title scherzo (Italian for “joke”) implies a measure of play, and Wuorinen’s Scherzo satisfies that notion. Across its ten-minute span, this is music of non-stop energy, full of color, force, and rhythmic excitement.

String Quartet in E-flat Major, Opus 74, “Harp”
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
Born December 16, 1770, Bonn
Died March 26, 1827, Vienna

Beethoven’s middle-period quartets proved difficult for audiences from the very beginning. The exception is the lovely Quartet in E-flat Major, Opus 74, long nicknamed the “Harp.” In contrast to the other middle quartets, this one is full of graceful music executed with consummate technical skill; no battles are fought and won here–instead one savors the calm pleasures of what is perhaps Beethoven’s most relaxed string quartet.

Yet this music was composed during a difficult time for Beethoven, the year 1809. That year, French armies under Napoleon bombarded and occupied Vienna, forcing most of the city’s nobility and many of Beethoven’s friends to flee (the composer himself hid in his brother’s basement during the bombardment with a pillow held tightly around his head). And it was during the French occupation that Beethoven’s old teacher Haydn died. Anguished, Beethoven wrote to his publishers: “We are enjoying a little peace after violent destruction, after suffering every hardship that one could conceivably endure. I worked for a few weeks in success, but it seemed to me more for death than for immortality.” Beethoven’s music from 1809, however, shows little trace of his anxieties: from early in that year came the noble “Emperor” Concerto, and after completing the quartet (probably in September 1809) Beethoven set to work on the incidental music to Goethe’s Egmont.

The first movement of the quartet opens with a slow introduction whose chromaticism creates an uncertain tonality; from this tonal blur, the main theme of the Allegro establishes the unequivocal key of E-flat major. Very quickly come the pizzicatos that have earned this quartet the (not particularly appropriate) nickname “Harp.” The development is quite active, and the recapitulation features a near-virtuoso first violin part that goes swirling across all four strings before the movement’s vigorous close. The Adagio, ma non troppo can be described simply–this is lovely music. It is built on one of Beethoven’s most attractive lyric ideas, which develops across three repetitions, each elaborated differently; throughout, Beethoven constantly reminds all four performers: cantabile and espressivo.

By contrast, the Presto bristles with energy. It bears a strong resemblance to the scherzo movement of the Fifth Symphony, composed two years earlier: both are in C minor, both are built on the same characteristic rhythm, and both feature fugal writing in the trio section. Yet where the third movement of the symphony builds through a huge crescendo to a triumphant finale, Beethoven winds this movement in the quartet down very carefully, and the finale that follows seems intentionally anti-climactic. It is a variation movement consisting of an almost innocent theme, six variations, and a coda; the odd-numbered variations tend to be vigorous and fast, the even-numbered lyric and gentle. The sixth variation gives way to a coda that extends the theme and leads to a wonderful–and very appropriate–conclusion: a great rush of sixteenth-notes powers the coda fortissimo to the very close where instead of hammering out a cadence, Beethoven concludes with two tiny and gentle chords. It is a conclusion brilliant in its understatement.

Piano Quintet in F Minor, Opus 34
JOHANNES BRAHMS
Born May 7, 1833, Hamburg
Died April 3, 1897, Vienna

As he grew older, Brahms became a more confident composer. He remained supremely self-critical throughout his life, but in his maturity he escaped the uncertainty that had led him to spend twenty years composing–and recomposing–his First Symphony. “It is wonderfully difficult to know which notes to allow to slip under the table,” Brahms is reported to have said, and there is evidence that he allowed twenty string quartets and a similar number of violin sonatas to “slip under the table” before he was satisfied enough to publish works in either form.

This self-criticism figured importantly in the composition of the Piano Quintet. Brahms began work on it in the summer of 1862, when he was 29 and still living in Hamburg, but when it was completed that fall, it was for string quintet: string quartet plus an extra cello (Brahms may have had in mind the model of the great String Quintet in C Major of Schubert, a composer he very much admired). This music, though, proved unsuccessful with the friends to whom the composer turned for advice, and in 1864 he recast it as a sonata for two pianos. Once again the work was unsuccessful. Clara Schumann’s letter to Brahms about the two-piano version offers unusual insight: “Its skillful combinations are interesting throughout, it is masterly from every point of view, but–it is not a sonata, but a work whose ideas you might–and must–scatter, as from a horn of plenty, over an entire orchestra . . . Please, dear Johannes, for this once take my advice and recast it.”

Recast it Brahms did, but not for orchestra. Instead he arranged it for piano and string quartet, preserving the dramatic impact of the piano from the two-piano version and combining that with the string sonority of the original quintet. In this form it has come down to us today, one of the masterpieces of Brahms’ early years, and it remains a source of wonder that music that sounds so right in the present version could have been conceived for other combinations of instruments (Brahms published the two-piano version, and it is occasionally heard today, but he destroyed all the parts of the string quintet version).

The Quintet is remarkable for the young composer’s skillful treatment of his themes–several of the movements derive much of their material from simple figures that are then developed ingeniously. The very beginning of the first movement makes clear the scope and strength of this music. In unison, first violin, cello, and piano present the opening theme, which ranges dramatically across four measures and comes to a brief pause. Then the music seems to explode with vitality above an agitated piano figure. But the piano’s rushing sixteenth-notes are simply a restatement of the opening theme at a much faster tempo, and this compression of material marks the entire movement–the opening theme, for example, is presented in many different guises. A dramatic development leads to a quiet coda, marked poco sostenuto; the tempo quickens, and the movement powers its way to the turbulent close.

By contrast, the Andante, un poco adagio–in ABA form–sings quietly. The piano’s gently-rocking opening theme, lightly echoed by the strings, gives way to a more animated middle section before the opening material reappears, now subtly varied. The C-minor Scherzo returns to the mood of the first movement. The cello’s ominous pizzicato C hammers with quiet insistence throughout, and once again Brahms wrings maximum use from his material: a nervous, stuttering sixteenth-note figure is transformed within seconds into a heroic chorale for massed strings, and later Brahms generates a brief fugal section from this same theme. With the concise trio comes a moment of relief before Brahms makes a da capo repeat of the scherzo.

The finale opens with strings alone, reaching upward in chromatic uncertainty before the Allegro non troppo main theme bursts out in the cello. The movement is a rondo, but this is a rondo with some unusual features: it offers a second theme and sets the rondo theme in unexpected keys. At the close, a haunting passage for quiet strings marked tranquillo leads to the vigorous coda.