Program notes by Eric Bromberger

Piano Variations (1930)

AARON COPLAND
Born November 14, 1900, Brooklyn
Died December 2, 1990, North Tarrytown, NY

Program notes by Eric Bromberger

Carnival Overture, Opus 92

ANTONÍN DVORˇÁK
Born September 8, 1841, Muhlhausen, Bohemia
Died May 1, 1904, Prague

Sonata No. 2 in G Minor, Opus 5, No. 2

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
Born December 16, 1770, Bonn
Died March 26, 1827, Vienna

 

Program notes by Eric Bromberger

Violin Concerto in D Major, Opus 61
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
Born December 16, 1770, Bonn
Died March 26, 1827, Vienna

Program notes by Eric Bromberger

Thème et Variations

OLIVIER MESSIAEN
Born December 10, 1908, Avignon
Died April 28, 1992, Paris

 

Program notes by Eric Bromberger

Sonata in A Major
(Transcribed for Cello by Jules Delsart)

CÉSAR FRANCK
Born December 10, 1822, Liege, Belgium
Died November 8, 1890, Paris

 

Program notes by Eric Bromberger

Violin Sonata No. 3 in D Minor, Opus 108

JOHANNES BRAHMS
Born May 7, 1833, Hamburg
Died April 3, 1897, Vienna

 

Program notes by Eric Bromberger

Schubert Song Transcriptions:
Frühlingsglaube, D.686
Die Stadt, D.957/11
FRANZ SCHUBERT
Born January 31, 1797, Vienna
Died November 19, 1828, Vienna

FRANZ LISZT
Born October 18, 1811, Raiding, Austria
Died July 31, 1886, Bayreuth, Germany

 

Program notes by Eric Bromberger

Entr'acte No. 3 from Rosamunde D. 797
FRANZ SCHUBERT
Born January 31, 1797, Vienna
Died November 19, 1828, Vienna

Program notes by Eric Bromberger

String Quartet in E-flat Major, Opus 51
ANTONIN DVOŘÁK
Born September 4, 1841, Mülhausen, Bohemia
Died May 1, 1904, Prague

Program notes by Eric Bromberger

Piano Sonata in C Minor, Opus 10, No. 1
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
Born December 16, 1770, Bonn
Died March 26, 1827, Vienna

Program notes by Eric Bromberger

TWO ARRANGEMENTS
Liszt is remembered not only for his own music but for his many arrangements of the music of other composers. Some of these were straightforward piano transcriptions of instrumental and vocal music by other composers - Liszt knew that this music would be unfamiliar to most listeners, and he generously set out to bring it to wide audiences. But Liszt also used the music of other composers as the starting point for his own creativity and virtuosity. In these cases he might use only the principal themes of someone else's music and from them build vast and exciting creations out of his own imagination. This all-Liszt program opens with two arrangements, one by Liszt of the music of Bach, the other an arrangement of Liszt's own music by Ferruccio Busoni.

Fantasia and Fugue in G Minor, BWV 542
(arranged for piano by Liszt, S.463)
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
Born March 21, 1685, Eisenach, Germany
Died July 28, 1750, Leipzig

Bach was a very young man when he composed this music about 1712: at age 27, he was serving as organist at the court of the Duke of Saxe-Weimar. The title makes clear that this work combines two completely different kinds of music: a fantasia (which implies a free, formless, improvisational music) and a fugue (one of the most disciplined forms in music). The Weimar court must have had a powerful organ, for this is huge, sonorous music, and it sounds spectacular when performed on a good organ in a resonant church. The grand Fantasia demands the full resources of both organ and player, for this is ornate and full-throated music, and it extends over a long span. The Fugue is based on an athletic subject, and many listeners will recognize it immediately, for it has been heard in numerous arrangements (and sometimes as television theme music). The subject may be athletic, but it has a sturdy nobility, and Bach works his complex fugue out carefully, finally driving to a close just as grand and sonorous as the conclusion of the Fantasia.

Liszt frequently performed the music of Bach on his recitals at a time when that music was largely unknown to audiences. He performed a number of the preludes and fugues from The Well-Tempered Clavier, and he also transcribed several of Bach’s works for organ for solo piano. Liszt’s transcription of the Fantasia and Fugue in G Minor, which dates from around 1863, has become one of the most popular of these. The challenge facing anyone who wishes to make a piano transcription of this music lies in getting the piano to generate the kind of grand sonority Bach created on the organ. Liszt does this in several ways, recasting passages in octaves, rolling chords, and sometimes thickening textures. And while it may be heresy to suggest it, Bach’s complex Fugue is greatly clarified in Liszt’s arrangement for piano.

Fantasia and Fugue on Ad Nos, Ad Salutarem Undam
(arranged for solo piano by Ferruccio Busoni)
FERRUCCIO BUSONI
Born April 1, 1866, Empoli, Italy
Died July 27, 1924, Berlin


FRANZ LISZT
Born October 22, 1811, Aversa, Italy
Died July 31, 1886, Bayreuth, Germany

This transcription involves not two, but three composers. Giacomo Meyerbeer’s grand opera Le Prophète premiered in Paris in April 1849, and its success was instantaneous. Liszt, then music director at Weimar, was quite taken with Meyerbeer’s music, and the following year he composed–for organ–the Fantasia and Fugue on Ad Nos, Ad Salutarem Undam. In the first act of Le Prophète, three Anabaptists sing a chorale (which Meyerbeer himself composed) urging the people of sixteenth-century Germany to seek re-baptism. Liszt used this chorale as the basis for a massive, brilliant work for organ, a work that stretches out to nearly half an hour in length. It falls into three connected sections. The opening Fantasia is dramatic, a series of sharply-contrasted ideas on the opening of Meyerbeer’s chorale. This is followed by a long and expressive Adagio interlude, which in turn is followed by the powerful Fugue, and this drives the work to its resounding conclusion.

Ferruccio Busoni was one of the great pianists of his era and a formidable composer, though–nearly a century after his death–his music is more admired than heard. Famed for his overpowering performances of Liszt, Chopin, and Beethoven, Busoni also made–in the manner of Liszt before him–a number of arrangements of music by other composers, sometimes amplifying the originals in ways that seemed to him to get at the music’s essential character. In 1897, a decade after Liszt’s death, Busoni made an arrangement of Liszt’s Fantasia and Fugue on Ad Nos, Ad Salutarem Undam for piano and in the process created one of the greatest virtuoso pieces ever conceived for the instrument. Faced with the challenge of getting a solo piano to approximate the massive sound of Liszt’s original organ version, Busoni creates all sorts of hurdles for his performer, including thunderous bass-lines, virtuoso flourishes across the keyboard, and all manner of textual complexity. The result is one of the great virtuoso pieces for solo piano, the joint product of two of the most formidable pianists who ever lived.

Liszt, who made his own version of this music for piano four-hands, would have loved Busoni’s version for solo piano.

Bénédiction de Dieu dans la Solitude from Harmonies Poétiques et Religieuses, S.173/3

Liszt wrote the set of ten pieces for piano that make up his Harmonies Poétiques et Religieuses between 1847 and 1852. These were the beginning of the composer’s Weimar years, the eleven-year period (1848-1859) when Liszt served as Kapellmeister at the Weimar court and produced many of his greatest works, including the Faust and Dante Symphonies, the symphonic poems, and many pieces for piano, including the Hungarian Rhapsodies. The Harmonies Poétiques et Religieuses, Liszt’s only work on a religious theme for piano, is a massive collection, lasting (in its entirety) over 80 minutes. The ten pieces are varied, both in kind and quality. One is a transcription of a work by another composer, several are revisions of earlier pieces by Liszt himself, and some are new. Dedicated to Princess Carolyn Sayn-Wittgenstein, the composer’s mistress, the Harmonies remained one of Liszt’s favorites among his own compositions.

Bénédiction de Dieu dans la Solitude, the third piece of the set, has been praised as one of Liszt’s finest works for piano, and many have been quick to hear in its luminous calm the same spirit that infuses the slow movements of Beethoven’s late quartets. It is preceded in the score by an excerpt from a poem by Lamartine: “When comes, O God, this peace that overwhelms me? Whence comes this faith with which my heart overflows?” The Bénédiction is in ternary form, and particularly noteworthy is the shimmering accompaniment in the right hand, as the quiet main theme unfolds in the left. The middle section is a gentle Andante, and in the closing section Liszt brings back all his themes.

Transcendental Étude No. 5 in B-flat Major "Feux Follets"

Liszt’s phenomenally difficult Transcendental Études have a complex history. He began work in 1824 (at age 13!) on what was planned as a cycle of 48 études in all the major and minor keys, but when the set was published in 1826 it consisted of only twelve. Liszt came back to this music a dozen years later–at the height of his career as one of the greatest piano virtuosos ever–and completely revised these pieces, in the process transforming them into some of the most difficult music ever written for the piano. In his review of the 1838 version, Robert Schumann called the Études “studies in storm and dread for, at the most, ten or twelve players in the world.” Liszt then returned to this music one more time–he revised theÉtudes again and published this version in 1852 under the title Études d’Exécution Transcendante. This edition–the one almost always performed today–thus represents Liszt’s final thoughts on music he had been working on all of his life.

Liszt gave ten of the études descriptive titles, but these were added after the music was complete rather than serving as starting points. Feux Follets–usually translated as Will-o-the-Wisps or Jack-o-Lanterns –is a study in texture, built on runs, swirls, and dancing staccatos. Atmosphere is everything in this music, and the pianist must maintain a flitting, floating, evanescent sound throughout. The dynamic remains subdued, rarely rising even to forte, as the music races without hesitation to its delicate concluding chord.

Valse Oubliée No. 1, S.215

Liszt composed four Valses Oubliées during the 1880s, though only the first of them (1881) has become famous. Certain critics have characterized these dances as salon music, though they are in fact much too difficult for that. The brief Valse Oubliée No. 1, in the unusual key of F-sharp major, alternates two subjects: a quick, brilliant opening and a more poised and staccato waltz-tune.

Nuages gris, S.199

Nuages gris, also composed in 1881, has become one of the best-known of Liszt’s late works. This somber study of “Gray Clouds,” quite free harmonically, would certainly have appealed to Debussy, who sought a similar freedom of tonality and expression; the pianist’s hands seem to inhabit different tonal worlds altogether.

Mephisto Waltz, No. 1, S.514

Liszt actually wrote four Mephisto Waltzes, but by far the best-known is the first, completed in 1861 as one of two episodes for orchestra based on Nikolaus Lenau’s lyric poem Faust. In this scene, Faust and Mephistopheles have come to a village inn. Faust is smitten by a woman he sees there, and Mephistopheles, bored by the inn and its inhabitants, seizes a violin and whips up a devilish waltz that soon has all the inhabitants of the inn spinning in a frenzy of excitement. The waltz itself is episodic: a rollicking opening gives way to a slow and languorous sequence, which in turn is followed by a shimmering episode almost reminiscent of Mendelssohn. Gradually the opening section returns to drive the dance to a fiery close. Liszt himself arranged the Mephisto Waltz for piano, and in this form it has become one of his most popular recital pieces.

Program notes by Eric Bromberger

Concerto in D Minor for Violin, Strings, and Harpsichord,
RV 242, Opus 8, No. 7 ANTONIO VIVALDI Born March 4, 1678, Venice
Died July 26/27, 1741, Vienna

In 1725 Vivaldi published as his Opus 8 a set of twelve violin concertos with the grand title Il cimiento dell’ armonia e dell’ inventione (“The Battle between Harmony and Invention”). The first four concertos in this collection are the concertos that make up The Four Seasons, and they have become vastly famous, but the other eight concertos are worth knowing too, and the Concerto in D Minor reminds us of Vivaldi’s growing fame throughout Europe.

Vivaldi had chosen to publish his Opus 8 in Amsterdam because of the superior printing techniques in that city, but that printer in Amsterdam also knew that this would be a good arrangement for him, for there was a market for Vivaldi’s music across Europe (one of those who eagerly purchased all of Vivaldi’s new publications was the cantor of Leipzig, Johann Sebastian Bach). A further indication of Vivaldi’s fame in German-speaking countries was the fact that in 1716-17 the German violin virtuoso Johann Georg Pisendel (1687-1755) made an extended visit to Venice. Pisendel–one of the finest violinists of his day–was a court musician in Dresden, and he was now accompanying the Prince-Elector of Dresden, who had come to Venice to expose his musicians to Italian music. Pisendel had already studied with Giuseppe Torelli, and in Venice he began to take lessons from Vivaldi. Pisendel and Vivaldi promptly became good friends, which is remarkable by itself, because Vivaldi was a notoriously difficult person to get along with. But get along they did, and in the course of the visit Vivaldi went so far as to compose and dedicate a collection of works to Pisendel.

The Concerto in D Minor, inscribed “Per Pisendel,” was one of these. This concerto is in the expected three movements. The opening Allegro is built on a noble ritornello, and the solo violin makes florid appearances between the various statements of that ritornello. The beautiful Largo belongs almost exclusively to the soloist, who performs above a bare pizzicato accompaniment from the orchestra. In many respects the last movement is the most impressive of the three. The ritornello here is dramatic, almost fierce, and the solo part in this movement is extremely difficult, particularly in its complex double-stopping. The brilliance of the writing for solo violin here suggests just how greatly Vivaldi respected the abilities of his friend from Dresden.

Concerto in B-flat Major for Harpsichord and Strings
DOMENICO CIMAROSA
Born December 17, 1749, Aversa, Italy
Died January 11, 1801, Venice

Domenico Cimarosa came from an unassuming background (his father was a stonemason who was killed in a fall at a construction project, his mother a laundress), but when the boy showed musical talent he was sent to a conservatory. There he did quite well, learning to play the organ and violin and to compose. He made his early career in Italy as a composer of comic operas and soon became so successful that his operas were produced throughout Italy. Cimarosa was called to St. Petersburg in 1787 as court composer to Catherine the Great and was named Kapellmeister in Vienna 1791. It was there that his opera Il matrimonio segreto had so striking a success at its première in February 1792 that Emperor Leopold II ordered the entire opera repeated after a break for dinner. Cimarosa returned to Italy, where his republican sentiments got him into serious trouble: he composed a hymn for the burning of the royal flag in Naples, and when the city was reoccupied by royalist forces Cimarosa was imprisoned and sentenced to death. He was spared, but only on condition that he leave Naples. Cimarosa fled to Venice, but his health was broken and he died within months at age 51.

Cimarosa wrote a great deal for solo harpsichord, including about eighty sonatas, but only one concerto for the instrument by him has survived. The Concerto in B-flat Major is a substantial work in four movements. While it comes from the era when Mozart was turning the keyboard concerto into a great form, this concerto represents a different approach altogether to concerto form. Rather than offering a dramatic structure built on the opposition of soloist and orchestra, this concerto makes its case through an agreeable lyricism. In fact, its middle movements of this concerto take their title and form from the opera house rather than the concert hall: the Recitativois suitably dramatic in its declamation, while the Aria sings. Cimarosa frames these with sturdy outer movements.

Concerto for Cello, Strings, and Continuo
GIUSEPPE TARTINI
Born April 8, 1692, Pirano, Istria
Died February 26, 1770, Padua, Italy

The details of the life of Giuseppe Tartini sound fantastic, but they were apparently all too true. As a boy, he learned to play the violin and to fence, and he became so good at both that he supported himself at law school by giving violin and fencing lessons–he even thought briefly of making a career as a fencing-master. But fate intervened, as it so often does: at age 20, Tartini eloped with one of his violin students, only to discover that his youthful bride was under the protection of her uncle, the archbishop of Padua, who came after Tartini with a vengeance. The young violin-and-fencing teacher had to flee Padua for Assisi, where he hid in a monastery. Only after the archbishop had calmed down (which took two years) could Tartini return to Padua. He had used his time in the cloister to study composition, and he now devoted himself completely to music, becoming music director of Saint Anthony’s in Padua and eventually founding a violin school; this became so famous that it attracted students from all over Europe, earning it the nickname “School of the Nations.” A prolific composer (about 350 works survive), Tartini devoted himself to mathematical speculation and studies in musical theory during his later years.

As might be expected, Tartini wrote primarily for the violin, and there are numerous sonatas and concertos for that instrument in his catalog. But he wrote only two concertos for cello. In the eighteenth century (and well into the nineteenth), composers thought of the cello as a bassline instrument, one charged simply with furnishing a harmonic foundation rather than being a melodic or solo instrument on its own. Vivaldi and Boccherini wrote a number of cello concertos in the eighteenth century, but it was not until the nineteenth that Schumann, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, and Dvořák began to unlock the dramatic, lyric, and soloistic possibilities of the instrument.

It is impossible to date Tartini’s compositions accurately. His concertos generally fall into the fast-slow-fast sequence of movements of the baroque concerto, and they take the standard form of the baroque concerto, alternating passages for the soloist with responses from the string orchestra. Tartini did not play the cello, but he had a spectacular understanding of stringed instruments and their possibilities, and all this is reflected in his writing for cello.

Passacaglia for Violin, Cello, and Strings
JOHANN HALVORSEN
Born March 15, 1864, Drammen, Norway
Died December 4, 1935, Oslo

Johann Halvorsen began his career as a violinist. He studied with Adolph Brodsky in Berlin and César Thomson in Belgium and then returned to Norway, where he became concertmaster of the Bergen orchestra. Halvorsen was also a conductor: he conducted in the Bergen Theatre and was for many years the conductor of the Christiana National Theatre. A friend and disciple of Grieg, Halvorsen married Grieg’s niece. He wrote three symphonies, a violin concerto, a number of pieces based on Norwegian material, and chamber music.

Though many of Halvorsen’s works have been recorded in Europe, only two have achieved popularity outside Norway. One is The Triumphant March of the Boyars, a stirring orchestral march that was quite popular a generation or two ago. The other is the Passacaglia for Violin and Violin, composed in 1897. Halvorsen described this work as being “after Handel,” and its fundamental thematic material is derived from the passacaglia and sarabande movements of Handel’s Suite No. 7 in G Minor for harpsichord, originally composed in London about 1720. Halvorsen transforms Handel’s keyboard music into a duo for violin and viola that maintains the solemn eight-bar progression of the original, yet extends that source with a number of techniques dear to the hearts of string players: double-stopping, pizzicato, dazzling runs. The music proceeds from the solemn opening statement through a series of increasingly ornate repetitions until finally it reaches a bravura climax marked Allegro con fuoco, then falls away to end with a grand cadence marked Adagio.

While readily accessible to audiences, this is not easy music for the performers, and it requires first-class performers. Halvorsen’s original version was soon transcribed for violin and cello and has also become familiar in this version. Among the music’s admirers was Jascha Heifetz, who recorded the Passacaglia with violist William Primrose and with cellist Gregor Piatigorsky. It is heard this evening in an arrangement for violin, cello, and string orchestra.

“La Folia” for Violin, Strings, and Harpsichord
FRANCESCO GEMINIANI
Born December 5, 1687, Lucca, Italy
Died September 17, 1762, Dublin

Francesco Geminiani was one of the great violinists of the eighteenth century. He learned to play the violin as a boy, then went on to Rome, where he studied with Arcangelo Corelli and Allesandro Scarlatti. He was briefly a member of the Naples opera orchestra before moving to England in 1714 when he was 27. Geminiani quickly established himself in London: within two years of his arrival he performed before King George I, accompanied by Handel at the keyboard. Thereafter, Geminiani made his career in London, with extended periods spent in Dublin and Paris, and late in life he wrote several treatises on the art of playing the violin. Geminiani was also an art collector, and that proved an expensive hobby–he occasionally landed in financial difficulties as a result.

Geminiani discovered that the music of his teacher Corelli was wildly popular in London, and in the 1720s he arranged a number of Corelli’s works for string orchestra. The most famous of these arrangements is of Corelli’s Violin Sonata in D Minor, Opus 5, No. 12, which featured a set of variations on an old tune known as La Folia (or La Follia). The La Folia tune was already several hundred years old when Corelli used it for his variations. It appears to have originated in fifteenth-century Portugal, where it was originally a fast dance in triple time, performed so strenuously that the dancers seemed to have gone mad–the title folia meant “mad” or “empty-headed” (it survives in our usage as “folly”). Over time, this dance slowed down and became the famous theme we know today, and its solemn chordal progression and stately melody have made it irresistibly attractive as the basis for variations. Among the many other composers who have surrendered to its charm are Vivaldi, Marais, Bach, Lully, Liszt, Nielsen, and Rachmaninoff.

Geminiani’s arrangement, which may be understood as an act of homage to his old teacher, has become one of the most popular of his own works. Corelli’s variations are concise and sharply-contrasted, and Geminiani’s string-orchestra version highlights and intensifies the drama in his teacher’s famous music.

Concerto in A Minor for Two Violins, Strings, and Harpsichord, RV 523
ANTONIO VIVALDI

Vivaldi wrote over 200 concertos for solo violin, but he also wrote 21 for two violins and string orchestra. Some of these are included in his catalog as concerti grossi, but these “double concertos” also provide the welcome opportunity for two violinists to perform together. As such, they are performed by violinists of all abilities, from the humblest amateurs to the greatest virtuosos.

Vivaldi actually wrote two double violin concertos in A minor. One has become quite popular (Isaac Stern and David Oistrakh recorded it), while the other–just as good–remains less well-known. This concert offers the opportunity to hear the less-familiar Concerto in A Minor for Two Violins. In the expected fast-slow-fast sequence of movements, it opens with quite a vigorous ritornello: Vivaldi specifies that he wants this fast movement to be played Allegro molto, and he then intertwines the two solo lines, making for some splendid counterpoint (and some splendid violin-playing). The Largo is, as in so many baroque concertos, essentially a chamber-music movement: over steady, solemn accompaniment, the two violins trade–and sometimes share–the noble melodic line. The vigor of the opening movement returns in the concluding Allegro. This is music of nobility and brilliance, and it leaps back and forth between the two solo violinists before the orchestra brings matter to a firm close.

Variazioni di Bravura on a Theme from Moses by Rossini
NICOLÒ PAGANINI
Born October 27, 1782, Genoa
Died May 27, 1840, Nice

Rossini composed his opera Moses in Egypt in 1818 and then expanded it into a grand opera as Moses and Pharaoh in 1827. For the Naples production in 1819, he added a prayer of the Israelites, led by Moses at the end of Act III: “Dal tuo stellato soglio.” Nicolò Paganini quickly took this melody and wrote a short series of variations on it for violin and orchestra. These variations have been subsequently arranged for cello by Pierre Fournier (the distinguishing feature of Fournier’s arrangement is that it requires the entire piece to be played on the cello’s A-string). This concert concludes with an arrangement for cello and string orchestra. An introduction marked Adagio leads to a statement of the theme; three quick-paced variations follow.

Program notes by Eric Bromberger

Funérailles from Harmonies Poétiques et Religieuses, S.173/7 FRANZ LISZT Born October 22, 1811, Raiding, Hungary
Died July 31, 1886, Bayreuth

Liszt wrote the set of ten pieces for piano that make up his Harmonies Poétiques et Religieuses between 1847 and 1852. These were the beginning of the composer’s Weimar years, the eleven-year period (1848-1859) when Liszt served as Kapellmeister at the Weimar court and produced many of his greatest works, including the Faust and Dante Symphonies, the symphonic poems, and many pieces for piano, including the Hungarian Rhapsodies. The Harmonies Poétiques et Religieuses, Liszt’s only work on a religious theme for piano, is a massive collection, lasting (in its entirety) over 80 minutes. The ten pieces are varied, both in kind and quality. One is a transcription of a work by another composer, several are revisions of earlier pieces by Liszt himself, and some are new. Dedicated to Princess Carolyn Sayn-Wittgenstein, the composer’s mistress, the Harmonies remained one of Liszt’s favorites among his own compositions.

Funérailles, the seventh of the ten pieces, was composed in October 1849. This was the month that Chopin died, and for years it was thought that Funérailles was written to mark Chopin’s death. Scholarship has shown, however, that it instead commemorates three patriots who died during the Hungarian Revolution of that same month. This is extremely dramatic music. It opens with the clang of funeral bells, and some have heard the sounds of battle–trumpet calls, pounding hooves–within this heroic funeral march. After the fury of its grief is spent, however, Funérailles concludes with almost inaudible chords.

La Lugubre Gondola I, S.200/1

During the final years of his long life, Liszt composed a series of remarkable short pieces. Liszt’s career as a touring virtuoso was now long in the past, and in these final years his efforts to “hurl my javelin into the infinite space of the future” (as he defined his mission as a composer) led him to compose music that might best be called experimental–these pieces bring new conceptions of form, sound, and harmony. Several of these pieces were in some way inspired by the death of Richard Wagner, Liszt’s son-in-law, in Venice in February 1883. In December 1882, two months before Wagner’s death, Liszt watched funeral gondolas move through Venice on their way to cemeteries. Suddenly he was assailed by a premonition of Wagner’s death and wrote La Lugubre Gondola, setting it in the 6/8 meter of the barcarolle, the traditional song of the gondoliers (the subtitle suggests that this music is a depiction of a funeral gondola). Three years later Liszt wrote a second version of this music, recasting it in 4/4 and extending it somewhat. The second version is the one more often played today, and this recital lets us hear La Lugubre Gondola in its original form. This is unsettling music. It may adapt the comfortable form of a gondolier’s song, but this music is fragmentary, chromatic, and dissonant. After a quiet beginning, the middle section features a tremolando left hand and growing tension before this elusive music fades into silence.

Réminiscences de Norma, S.394

Liszt made a number of straightforward piano versions of works by other composers, such as Beethoven symphonies, Weber overtures, and other orchestral works, chamber music, and songs. His motives here were entirely generous: he liked this music and knew that performances of the original versions would be infrequent, so he set out to bring the music to a wider audience by playing it in piano versions. Such arrangements are generally known as transcriptions: straightforward and (fairly) literal piano versions of works originally written for instruments or voice.

But Liszt also turned to the music of other composers as the starting point for his own creativity and as an opportunity to demonstrate his keyboard virtuosity. Such works go under a variety of names, including paraphrase, reminiscence, or fantasy, and for them Liszt would often turn to popular operas: he would begin with some of the best-known tunes from operas, and from them he would create virtuoso works for the keyboard. The themes may have been written by other composers, but the treatment was entirely Liszt’s–these are essentially original compositions by Liszt, and they became vastly popular.

Vincenzo Bellini’s Norma was first produced in 1831, when that composer was only 30. Set in ancient Gaul during the revolt against the Roman occupation, the opera tells of the druid priestess Norma and her fatal love for the Roman soldier Pollione. Liszt wrote his Réminiscences de Norma in 1841, and in this case he built up his paraphrase on themes specifically associated with Norma herself. The Réminiscences become, then, a sort of portrait of that heroine, though here they are done up with a furious virtuosity. Liszt subtitled this work “Grand fantaisie pour piano,” and grand it certainly is, stretching out to over a quarter-hour in length. The work begins with a powerful statement–marked Tempo giusto, marcato, and fortissimo–that imitates the sound of a full orchestra, complete with drum-rhythms and broadly-arpeggiated chords. Liszt then proceeds to take the Norma themes, six in all, through an extended and brilliant treatment.

Danse Macabre, S.555

Danse Macabre was of course originally composed by Camille Saint-Saëns, but Liszt’s transcription represents so complete a recomposition that this music must be attributed to him. Some background: in 1873 Saint-Saëns wrote a song that set a spooky poem by Henri Cavalis in which the souls of the dead come to life at midnight and dance their way through a black sabbath as Death plays his violin. Cavalis’ poem has been translated freely:

Zig, zig, zig, Death is striking a tomb with his heel in cadence. Death is playing a dance tune on his violin at midnight. The winter wind blows, and the night is dark. From the linden-trees come moans. White skeletons move across the shadows, running and leaping in their shrouds. Zig, zig, zig, each one gives a tremor, and the dancer’s bones rattle. Hush! They leave off dancing, they jostle one another, they flee–the cock has crowed.

But Saint-Saëns was dissatisfied with his song–he thought it unsingable–and the following year he recast the music as a tone poem for orchestra.

That orchestral version opens as the harp sounds the twelve strokes of midnight, and Death promptly tunes his violin. He doesn’t get it quite right, however, for he tunes his E-string a half-step flat. The resulting discord is a tritone (three whole steps, or a diminished fifth), infamous from medieval times as the sound of the devil (as a result, it was banned in some music). Here Saint-Saëns lets that discord ring out stridently, and Death quickly launches into his waltz. Soon we hear the sound of dancing skeletons, nicely suggested by the rattle of the xylophone, and Saint-Saëns builds his dance with some skill, treating it fugally at one point and combining his two main themes at the climax. That climax breaks off into silence, and the crow of a distant rooster (solo oboe) suggests the coming of dawn. The spirits cringe before the light but quickly bow to the inevitable, return to their graves, and the music winks out before us.

Saint-Saëns was good friends with Franz Liszt, and the two were colleagues as well: Liszt presented the first performance of Saint-Saëns’ opera Samson et Dalila in Weimar after it had been rejected by the Paris Opera. The orchestral version of Danse Macabre was premièred in Paris on January 24, 1875, and Liszt heard it soon after that. He was very attracted to the music, and the following year he made a piano version of it. Some of Liszt’s piano transcriptions of orchestral works remained faithful to the originals, but in this case Liszt completely re-composed Danse Macabre, and at moments Saint-Saëns’ music almost disappears behind Liszt’s pianistic virtuosity. Liszt was of course attracted to the demonic subject of his friend’s tone poem, and his piano arrangement emphasizes that diabolical element as phrases are added, extended, and embellished. The music is also made more “pianistic,” with much staccato writing, arpeggios across the keyboard, and cadenza-like flourishes; Liszt’s arrangement is much longer than Saint-Saëns’ original. Liszt’s version has been widely admired and performed: in The New Grove Dictionary of Music, Humphrey Searle notes that it “takes considerable liberties with the original (much to its advantage).”

Unstern: Sinistre, Disastro, S.208

Unstern: Sinistre, Disastro is another of Liszt’s experimental late works–and also one of his most mysterious compositions. That strange tri-lingual title does not translate easily, but implies something ominous (Unstern means “ill-omened” or “ill-fated”). This is striking music, full of unsettled harmonies, rhythmic tension between the two hands, and driving energy that finally leads to a mysterious–and unexpected–close.

Impromptu in F-sharp Major, S.191 “Nocturne”

Little-known to general audiences, the Impromptu is a late work, composed in 1872 while Liszt was living in Rome. The title alone makes this piece distinctive, for it combines two forms that Liszt rarely used: the impromptu (a term suggesting music improvised on the spot) and the nocturne (suggesting music that partakes of the spirit of the night). Liszt’s Impromptu, brief and evocative, is quite attractive. He marks the opening Animato, con passione, and over rippling left-hand accompaniment the right hand introduces the principal melody, marked dolcissimo on its first appearance. But from this subdued beginning, the music quickly rises to a tumultuous climax, full of cascades of sound and scintillating colors. After all this energy, the piece falls away to an unexpectedly chaste conclusion, and perhaps the calm of this ending is what earned this music the subtitle nocturne.

Rhapsodie Espagnole, S.254

Liszt composed his Rhapsodie Espagnole in 1863, when he was in his early fifties. He had for some time been drawn to the idea of composing piano works based on themes of specific national character, and he used tunes of Hungarian, Russian, Polish, French, German, English, and other origins as the material for these. This “Spanish Rhapsody” is based on two famous themes of ancient Spanish origin, both of them already treated by other important composers: La Folia, which nearly two centuries earlier had formed the ground bass for a set of violin variations by Corelli, and the Jota aragonesa, which Glinka had used for a brilliant orchestral work. Liszt’s Rhapsodie Espagnole opens with a terrific cadenza, then La Folia is heard deep in the left hand and is transformed into music of roof-rattling virtuosity before the quiet statement of the Jota aragonesa. This too is extended brilliantly (much of the writing is in the piano’s ringing high register) before the Rhapsodie closes on a fragment of La Folia.

A generation after Liszt composed this music, the Italian composer-pianist Ferruccio Busoni made a tremendous arrangement of Rhapsodie Espagnole for piano and orchestra. One of the early performers of the Busoni version was a superb young pianist (and great admirer of Liszt) named Béla Bartók.

CREATORS’ NOTE

The Kings of Salsa pays homage to all the great Cuban performers, composers and dance styles that have been born from this incredible island with a cool contemporary twist showing young Cuba today. We hope you enjoy the show!!!

Roclan & Jon

THE DANCERS
Girls
Lianett Rodríguez González
Onelbis Torres Pérez
Nayara Nunes Oliva
Yeleni Aguirre Camacho
Boys
Yuniet Meneses Solís
Danilo Machado Meneses
Alejandro Alí Pérez Fernández
Jesús Elías Almenares

THE BAND
Thommy Lowry García Rojas, trumpet and musical director
Osmar Salazar Hernández, bass and musical director
Roclan González Chavez, male vocal
Danais Menéndez Valdés, female vocal
Rayhner Amir Lasserie,drums
Carlos Alberto Gaytán Novo, piano
Marcos Antonio Alonso Brito, guitar
Luis Guillermo Palacio Galves, congas
Yaimi Karell Lay, batars/percusion and vocals
Eduardo Fonseca, marrón and trombone

FALL 2011 NORTH AMERICA TOUR

This performance marks the Kings of Salsa’s La Jolla Music Society debut.

Roclan González Chavez & Jon Lee
Concept and Artistic Directors

Roclan González Chavez
Choreographer

Mark Brady – ATA Allstar Artists
Jon Lee – Maximo Productions
Producers

Alexander Allen
Lighting Design

Allen Van Dyke
Sound Design Engineer

Edgar Fernando Rodriguez, Olivero Osmar, Salazar Hernandez
Marcos Antonio, Alonso Brito
Roclan González Chavez
Thommy Lowry, García Rojas Composers

Sophie Goudard
Company Manager

Maestro Travel & Touring
Hotel & Ground Transportation

SPECIAL THANKS

Cristy Domínguez – Director - Ballet de la Televisión Cubana Company; Dagmara Delgado – Production Manager Havana; Nieves Candelario-Project Coordinator Havana; Antonio María Romeu; RTV Comercial; ARTEX; Ministerio de Cultura; Instituto de la Música; Consejo de las Artes Escénicas

 

Program notes by Eric Bromberger

Concertone for Two Violins in C Major, K. 190 Wolfgang Amadeus MOZART

Born January 27, 1756, Salzburg
Died December 5, 1791, Vienna

Mozart wrote this unusual work over a period of time: he apparently began it in the spring of 1773, when the 17-year-old composer had just returned from his final visit to Italy, and completed it a year later on May 31, 1774. The term concertone (which comes from the Italian) means simply a large or grand concerto, but the soloists here are unusual: two violins, solo oboe, and solo cello. The use of multiple soloists places this music within two musical traditions: the Italian concerto grosso and the sinfonie concertante as it was developing across northern Europe. In both forms, multiple soloists emerge from the orchestral texture, play in contrast to it, and return. Mozart knew the concerto grosso from his Italian visits, and during these same years Johann Christian Bach, youngest son of Johann Sebastian, was writing a series of sinfonia concertante for a variety of instruments.

Young Mozart knew and respected Johann Christian: as a seven-year-old, Mozart had played keyboard duets in London while sitting in the older composer’s lap. Johann Christian wrote in a style we know as galant, and the Concertone is Mozart’s most galant piece. In music, galant means gallant, courtly, elegant: this style of music–it flourished about the middle of the eighteenth century–emphasized smooth and well-defined melodies, clear textures, and beauty of sound; it grew up specifically in reaction against the supposedly too-complex contrapuntal style of late baroque music (ironically best symbolized by Johann Christian’s father, J.S. Bach). Young Mozart was certainly aware of the galant style, for it was popular in Mannheim, Paris, and other musical centers when he was a young man.

When Mozart completed the Concertone in May 1774, he had written very few concertos: only five for piano (and the first four of these were transcriptions of other composers’ music), and he would write his Bassoon Concerto the week after completing the Concertone. The Concertone is a big work, stretching out to nearly half an hour in length. It unfolds at a leisurely pace, its melodies tend to be long and complete in themselves, and textures are polished and pleasing. The Allegro spiritoso opens with that firm dotted rhythm Mozart so loved for his openings, and the soloists enter after the exposition (it should be noted that the solo cello is given almost no role in the first movement). Matters unfold very gracefully across the span of this movement, and Mozart writes out a cadenza for oboe and the two violins just before the cadence. Longest of the three movements, the Andantino grazioso is in ternary form. A lengthy orchestral introduction leads to the entrance of the soloists, there are some excursions into minor keys in the central episode, and Mozart again writes out a cadenza (this time including the solo cello) before the movement closes on a return of the opening material. The last movement is unusual formally, for it is a minuet and trio; Mozart apparently liked this idea enough that when he wrote the Bassoon Concerto the week after completing the Concertone, he set that finale in minuet-form as well. In the Concertone, the minuet dances with unusual vigor and at some length; Mozart turns the trio section over to just the four soloists, and the Concertone is rounded off by a return of the minuet material.

Grand Duo Concertante for Violin and Double BassGiovanni BOTTESINI

Born December 22, 1821, Crema, Italy
Died July 7, 1889, Parma

The life of Giovanni Bottesini is a lesson in musical necessity. As a boy he showed extraordinary talent and learned to sing and to play the timpani and violin, but when he tried to enter the Milan Conservatory in 1835, there were scholarships available only for bassoonists and double bassists. The fourteen-year-old promptly learned to play the double bass, and within a month he played well enough that he won one of those scholarships. He played so well, in fact, that he became one of the greatest performers on that instrument in history: during his lifetime he was billed as “the Paganini of the double bass,” and so great was his fame on the instrument that when the young Serge Koussevitzky began to develop a reputation as a double bassist, he in turn was referred to as “a Russian Bottesini.” Bottesini was an original: he had his instrument re-strung with only three strings (which were then re-tuned), and he used a cello bow to help create a lighter sound.

But Bottesini’s musical talents were not limited simply to playing the double bass. He became a conductor and led operas in Havana, New Orleans, New York, London, Mexico, St. Petersburg, Paris, Scandinavia, Spain, Portugal, and elsewhere (and it was at Verdi’s specific request that Bottesini conducted the première of Aida in Cairo in 1871). He also found time to compose, and while he wrote ten operas, the vast majority of his compositions are for double bass, including concertos, duos, opera paraphrases, and even a set of 36 studies for the instrument.

Bottesini’s most famous composition by far is the Grand Duo Concertante, published in Paris in 1880 but probably written somewhat earlier. This work was originally for two double basses and orchestra, but one of Bottesini’s colleagues re-wrote one of the solo parts for violin, and in this form it has had its greatest success: Bottesini himself performed it with such violinists as Wieniawski and Vieuxtemps (there is also a version for clarinet and double bass). This music is intended to please audiences and performers rather than music critics: it is a series of episodes characterized by an agreeable melodiousness coupled with the requisite virtuoso flights, and it allows two good performers to demonstrate their skill in this unusual combination of sonorities. The virtuosity of the violin part is almost taken for granted, but the real surprise in the Gran Duo Concertante is the virtuosity of the double bass line, for that instrument is given a part of unusual lightness, almost an airy grace, that is far removed from the instrument’s usual character as provider of a stolid harmonic foundation in orchestral music; it is this sort of writing, in fact, that suggests just how good a performer Bottesini must have been. The music itself requires little in the way of introduction: it alternates grand rhetorical flourishes with lyrical moments and virtuoso flights; sometimes the soloists are in unison, but Bottesini gives them frequent opportunities to shine individually as this music moves easily through several episodes to its animated close.

Piano Concerto No. 25 in C Major, K. 503 Wolfgang Amadeus MOZART

In the fall of 1786, the 30-year-old Mozart set to work simultaneously on two large-scale orchestral works: he completed the Piano Concerto in C Major on December 4 and a Symphony in D Major two days later; the symphony would assume the nickname “Prague” when it was premièred in that city the following month. There is, however, no record of the première of the concerto, nor is there any indication of the occasion for which it was written–this remains the least-known of the series of phenomenal piano concertos Mozart wrote in the years 1785-6. It lacks the seething power of the Concerto in D Minor, K.466, the jaunty heroism of the Concerto in C Major, K.467, the lyricism of the Concerto in A Major, K.488, and the dark drama of the Concerto in C Minor, K.491, and some have found it almost faceless in that distinguished company. The New Grove Dictionary, in fact, calls this concerto “almost neutral in character.”

These critics seem to have a point. The Concerto in C Major is not memorably lyric: its themes–built on triadic chords, scales, and simple rhythmic motifs–feel almost static. But the wonder of this music is what Mozart does with his material, for this concerto shows him at his finest: its graceful interplay between soloist and orchestra, ingenious development of (seemingly) neutral ideas, and contrapuntal ease make the Concerto in C Major one of his most subtle and affecting scores.

The opening Allegro maestoso is aptly named: this truly is majestic music, and it leaps to life with one of Mozart’s grandest openings, punctuated by the sound of trumpets and drums. Yet this massive opening is built simply on C-major chords, almost static in themselves, and only incidentally does Mozart introduce the rhythmic motif that will shape and unify so much of this music (this pattern of three eighths and a downbeat would later become famous as the opening of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, but it haunted Mozart as well). A further surprise is the entrance of the piano: after the mighty orchestral opening–with its powerful chords, rushing scales, and C-minor modulations–the piano makes what seems an understated entrance, slipping in almost shyly. It has been noted that this movement manages to be heroic while avoiding any trace of struggle: there are no battles fought and won here, but instead an air of serenity, a carefree exultation in sophisticated music-making as Mozart transforms simple materials into music of charm and grace over an unusually long span (this is the longest movement in any Mozart concerto).

The subsequent movements partake of the same spirit and technique, though on a smaller scale. The Andante, relaxed and reflective, features some of Mozart’s sensitive writing for woodwinds. The piano part, gentle as it is, is marked by some unusually wide skips, particularly the upward leap of a tenth. Along the way, alert listeners will recognize the same rhythmic motif that underlay the first movement. The finale is rondo-like in structure, but with some important variations. Mozart borrowed its central theme from the ballet music to his opera Idomeneo, composed six years earlier, and here that tune makes few literal returns. Rather, it is subtly varied in a movement that seems more a series of continuous variations than the standard rondo process of literal repetition. In this movement, Mozart combines some of the reflective quality of the Andante with the C-major trumpet-and-drum fanfares of the opening movement.

Some scholars have gone so far as to suggest that Mozart deliberately made the thematic material of this concerto neutral as a way of shifting interest away from the themes and onto what he does with them; this may explain the unusual length of the development in the first movement. In any case, while the Concerto in C Major may not have achieved the popularity of some of Mozart’s other piano concertos, it remains–in its subtle and expressive way–one of his finest creations.

Program notes by Eric Bromberger

Fantaisie in A Major for Violin and Harp, Opus 124 Camille SAINT-SAËNS

Born October 9, 1835, Paris
Died December 16, 1921, Algiers, Algeria

Saint-Saëns’ most popular works–the “Organ” Symphony, the concertos for piano and for violin, and Danse macabre–employ a heavy, almost Germanic, sound, but as he grew older Saint-Saëns came to prefer a leaner sonority. His textures became thinner and more refined, and as a part of this he became interested in the sound of the harp, almost preferring it to the sound of the piano: in 1893 he wrote a Fantaisie for solo harp and in 1918 a Morceau de Concert for harp and orchestra. Saint-Saëns’ Fantaisie for Violin and Harp dates from 1907, when he was in his early seventies. This combination of instruments is not as original as it might at first seem: a century earlier, the German violinist Ludwig Spohr had married a virtuoso harpist, and he wrote a great deal of music for the couple to play on tour, including six sonatas for violin and harp.

Music for violin and harp contrasts two quite different sonorities: the violin, resonant and sustained, is at its best in lyric, linear music, while the harp projects a percussive and more delicate sonority, heard to best advantage in runs and chords. Saint-Saëns’ Fantaisie makes varied use of both these sounds, though Saint-Saëns usually gives the violin the greater share of melodic material, with the harp furnishing the harmonic context and rhythmic accompaniment. The piece is episodic in structure. A slow introduction leads to an increase in energy and tempo, and Saint-Saëns then takes his performers through a series of contrasting moods and manners, exactly what one expects from a piece called a Fantaisie. The danger in such music is that a composer will surrender to the temptation to write a series of pleasing tunes, revel in the good sounds, and end up writing faceless salon music. Saint-Saëns avoids this gracefully: his Fantaisie may be episodic, but the different sections maintain a formal balance and emotional restraint. The Fantaisie is by no means easy music technically, and Saint-Saëns requires two first-class performers who can project soaring lyric lines one moment, a poised and somber dignity the next. After these many moods, the Fantaisie y comes to a quiet, almost subdued, close.

Octet for Strings in E-flat Major, Opus 20 Felix MENDELSSOHN

Born February 3, 1809, Hamburg
Died November 4, 1847, Leipzig

It has become a cliché with a certain kind of critic to say that Mendelssohn never fulfilled the promise of his youth. Such a charge is a pretty tough thing to say about someone who died at 38–most of us would think Mendelssohn never made it out of his youth. And such a charge overlooks the great works Mendelssohn completed in the years just before his death: the Violin Concerto, the complete incidental music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Elijah. But there can be no gainsaying the fact that the young Mendelssohn was a composer whose gifts and promise rivaled–perhaps even surpassed–the young Mozart’s. The child of an educated family that fully supported his talent, Mendelssohn had by age 9 written works that were performed by professional groups in Berlin. At 12 he became close friends with the 72-year-old Goethe, at 17 he composed the magnificent overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and at 20 he led the performance of the St. Matthew Passion that was probably the key event in the revival of interest in Bach’s music.

Mendelssohn completed his Octet in October 1825, when he was 16. One of the finest of his early works, the Octet is remarkable for its polished technique, its sweep, and for its sheer exhilaration. Mendelssohn’s decision to write for a string octet is an interesting one, for such an ensemble approaches chamber-orchestra size, and a composer must steer a careful course between orchestral sonority and true chamber music. Mendelssohn handles this problem easily. At times this music can sound orchestral, as he sets different groups of instruments against each other, but the Octet remains true chamber music–each of the eight voices is distinct and important, and even at its most dazzling and extroverted the Octet preserves the equal participation of independent voices so crucial to chamber music.

Mendelssohn marked the first movement Allegro moderato ma con fuoco, and certainly there is fire in the very beginning, where the first violin rises and falls back through a range of three octaves. Longest by far of the movements, the first is marked by energy, sweep, and an easy exchange between all eight voices before rising to a grand climax derived from the opening theme. By contrast, the Andante is based on the simple melody announced by the lower strings and quickly taken up by the four violins. This gentle melodic line becomes more animated as it develops, with accompanying voices that grow particularly restless.

The Scherzo is the most famous part of the Octet. Mendelssohn said that it was inspired by the closing lines of the Walpurgisnacht section near the end of Part I of Goethe’s Faust, where Faust and

Mephistopheles descend into the underworld. He apparently had in mind the final lines of the description of the marriage of Oberon and Titania:

Clouds go by and mists recede,
Bathed in the dawn and blended;
Sighs the wind in leaf and reed,
And all our tale is ended.

This music zips along brilliantly. Mendelssohn marked it Allegro leggierissimo–“as light as possible”–and it does seem like goblin music, sparkling, trilling, and swirling right up to the end, where it vanishes into thin air.

Featuring an eight-part fugato, the energetic Presto demonstrates the young composer’s contrapuntal skill. There are many wonderful touches here. At one point sharp-eared listeners may detect a quotation, perhaps unconscious, of “And He Shall Reign” from the Hallelujah Chorus of Handel’s Messiah, and near the end Mendelssohn skillfully brings back the main theme of the Scherzo as a countermelody to the finale’s polyphonic complexity. It is a masterstroke in a piece of music that would be a brilliant achievement by a composer of any age.

Octet for Strings in C Major, Opus 7 George ENESCU

Born August 19, 1881, Liveni Virnav, Romania
Died May 3/4, 1955, Paris

 

A child prodigy, George Enescu eft Romania at age 7 to enter the Conservatory of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna, then went on to study at the Paris Conservatory. Along the way, he worked with a spectacular array of musicians: in Vienna he played in orchestras conducted by Brahms, and in Paris he studied with Massenet and Fauré, became friends with Saint-Saëns, and was a classmate of Ravel. He graduated from the Paris Conservatory with a first prize in violin in 1899 at the age of 18, then embarked on a career as violinist and composer.

Enescu’s music took two distinct paths at first. There were consciously nationalistic works like the Romanian Rhapsodies, composed in 1900-01. But at this same moment, just as he left the Conservatory, the teenaged Enescu set to work on quite a different piece, an Octet for Strings. In contrast to the Romanian Rhapsodies, which string together a series of Romanian folksongs in an episodic structure, the Octet was very carefully conceived and composed as a complex musical structure. The Octet grows out of its powerful opening idea, which will reappear in many subtle transformations across its forty-minute span. The process of composition was difficult for the young composer (it took him eighteen months to complete the Octet), and Enescu, who planned the piece with great precision, noted that “An engineer who would have thrown over a river his first suspension bridge wouldn’t have been so anxious as I was blackening the paper with staves.”

An Octet for Strings of course calls to mind the other great octet for strings, also written by a teenager: Mendelssohn’s Octet of 1825, composed when he was 16. But how different these two works are! Mendelssohn’s Octet is all fleetness, grace, and polish, but Enescu’s plunges us into a world of violence, sonority, and conflict. Its première in Paris produced varied responses. The French violinist and conductor Edouard Colonne brought his son to the première, and at the conclusion the son remarked, “Well, but this is awfully beautiful.” To which the father replied, “Of course, it is more awful than beautiful.” (Enescu, who had a wonderful sense of humor, loved to tell this story.)

The principal influence on Enescu’s Octet was not Mendelssohn, but–surprisingly–Berlioz, who wrote no chamber music of his own. But Enescu saw a role model in Berlioz, who had been dead for thirty years when he began work on the Octet: Berlioz had fought against hidebound French musical traditions and had introduced a nightmare element into his music, one that strongly attracted Enescu(who in fact quotes the Symphonie fantastique in the closing moments of the Octet). Enescu noted that he wanted to bring the extravagance of the earlier composer to the civilized world of chamber music: “Sometimes I felt myself like a Berlioz in chamber music, if it is possible to imagine the man who used five orchestras composing such a kind of music.”

The opening instantly establishes the character of this powerful music. Over steady accompaniment from the second cello, the other seven instruments hammer out the opening theme, a sinuous, angular, and propulsive idea that takes nearly a minute to unfold. This is the seminal subject of the Octet, and all subsequent material will in some way be related to this theme. This is very densely argued exposition: much of it unfolds canonically, and the writing makes virtuoso demands on all eight players. The second subject, announced by the first viola and marked expressive and grieving, seems to strike a different note, but this theme is simply a derivation of the powerful opening idea. After a dynamic development, this extended movement trails into silence on a muted re-statement of the main idea.

Enescu calls for only a brief pause between the first and second movements (long enough only to remove the mutes), and suddenly the second movement leaps violently to life. Marked Très fougueux (“fiery, impetuous”), it opens with the same sort of unison explosion that launched the first movement, but now that theme has evolved into something spiky and fierce. Enescu marks this opening statement agité, and it alternates with slower, gentler material marked caressant: “caressing.” The movement develops principally through a violent fugue based on its opening gesture; along the way the principal theme of the first movement makes a reappearance, and the music drives to a huge climax full of massed chords.

This fury subsides, and the music proceeds without pause into the third movement, marked Lentement. This opens with a series of slow, muted chords (once again derived from the seminal theme), and soon the first violin sings the grieving main idea (one of Enescu’s recurring markings in this movement is velouté: “velvety”). Gentle as its opening may be, this movement, too, rises to a conflicted climax, recalling themes from the opening movement as it proceeds. The finale, which begins without pause, is a sort of grand waltz, full of energy and sweep. The movement drives aggressively to its closing pages, which bring a surprise: the music slows, and the first violin sings a phrase that appears to be derived from the theme of the Beloved in Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique. After all the violence of the Octet, this episode–however brief–seems to offer a moment of relief, of purity. And then the furies return to drive the Octet to its surprisingly fierce conclusion.

Program notes by Eric Bromberger

Duets for Violin and Cello Reinhold GLIÈRE

Born January 11, 1875, Kiev
Died June 23, 1956, Moscow

The music of Reinhold Glière has almost disappeared from concert life in the West. There was a time when his epic Ilya Murometz Symphony was regularly performed, and his Russian Sailors Dance was once a pops concert staple, but even these seem to have drifted off our radar, and performances of his music today are rare. Yet Glière was a prolific composer and–in Russia–an influential one. Trained at the Moscow Conservatory, he taught there from 1920 until 1941 and served as chairman of the organizing committee of the Union of Soviet Composers from 1939 until 1948. Such positions, however, did not protect him during the Soviet crackdown on its composers in 1948, and at that infamous congress Glière was stripped of his official positions. As a composer, Glière was particularly drawn to the folk music of the Transcaucasus region, and his work often has an epic, heroic character (the Ilya Murometz Symphony being one of the best examples). Glière composed operas, seven ballets, three symphonies, and a number of concertos and other works for orchestra, as well as vocal and chamber music.

Among his chamber music are several volumes of duos for various combinations of stringed instruments: there are duos for two cellos and several sets of duos for violin and cello. Glière doubtless intended this as Hausmusik: music that could be played at home for the enjoyment of the participants. That did not prevent him from writing technically demanding music–apparently Glière had very accomplished amateur musicians in mind when he composed these short pieces for them, and it is worth noting that Heifetz and Piatigorsky recorded one of Glière’s duos. This concert opens with a selection of these duos for violin and cello: Hausmusik perhaps, but nevertheless music difficult enough and appealing enough to attract even the greatest virtuosos–and to give pleasure to all who hear it.

String Quartet in A Major, Opus 41, No. 3 Robert SCHUMANN

Born June 8, 1810, Zwickau, Germany
Died July 29, 1856, Endenich, Germany

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, composed quickly 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.

String Quintet in C Major, D. 956 Franz SCHUBERT

Born January 31, 1797, Vienna
Died November 19, 1828, Vienna

Schubert’s String Quintet in C Major, universally acknowledged as one of the finest creations in all chamber music, dates from the miraculous final year of that composer’s brief life, 1828. That year saw the revision of the “Great” Symphony in C Major and the composition of the three final piano sonatas, the songs of the Schwanengesang collection, this quintet, and the song “Der Hirt auf Dem Felsen,” completed in the weeks just prior to Schubert’s death on November 19. The date of the Quintet is difficult to pin down, but it was probably composed at the end of the summer–on October 2 Schubert wrote to one of his publishers that he had “finally turned out a Quintet for 2 violins, 1 viola, and 2 violoncellos.”

Many have been quick to hear premonitions of death in this quintet, as if this music–Schubert’s last instrumental work–must represent a summing-up of his life. But it is dangerous to read intimations of mortality into music written shortly before any composer’s death, and there is little basis for such a conclusion here–although he was ill during the summer, Schubert did not know that he was fatally ill. Rather than being death-haunted, the Quintet in C Major is music of great richness, music that suffuses a golden glow. Some of this is due to its unusual sonority: the additional cello brings weight to the instrumental texture and allows one cello to become a full partner in the thematic material, a freedom Schubert fully exploits. Of unusual length (over 50 minutes long), the Quintet also shows great harmonic freedom–some have commented that this music seems to change keys every two bars.

The opening Allegro ma non troppo is built on three theme groups: the quiet violin theme heard at the very beginning, an extended duet for the two cellos, and a little march figure for all five instruments. The cello duet is unbelievably beautiful, so beautiful that many musicians (certainly many cellists!) have said that they would like nothing on their tombstone except the music for this passage. But it is the march tune that dominates the development section; the recapitulation is a fairly literal repeat of the opening section, and a brief coda brings the movement to its close.

Longest of the four movements, the Adagio is in ABA form. The opening is remarkable: the three middle voices–second violin, viola, and first cello–sing a gentle melody that stretches easily over 28 bars; the second cello accompanies them with pizzicato notes, while high above the first violin decorates the melody with quiet interjections of its own. The middle section, in F minor, feels agitated and dark; a trill leads back to the opening material, but now the two outer voices accompany the melody with runs and swirls that have suddenly grown complex.

The third movement is a scherzo-and-trio, marked Presto. The bounding scherzo, with its hunting horn calls, is fairly straightforward, but the trio is quite unusual, in some surprising ways the emotional center of the entire Quintet. One normally expects a trio section to be gentle in mood, sometimes even a thematic extension of the scherzo. But this trio, marked Andante sostenuto and in the unexpected key of D-flat major, is spare, grave, haunting. Schubert sets it in 4/4 instead of the expected 3/4, and its lean lines and harmonic surprises give it a grieving quality quite different from the scherzo. The lament concludes, and the music plunges back into sunlight as the scherzo resumes.

Many have heard Hungarian folk music in the opening of the Allegretto, with its evocation of wild gypsy fiddling. The second theme is one of those graceful little tunes that only Schubert could write; both themes figure throughout the movement, until finally another cello duet leads to a fiery coda ingeniously employing both main themes.

The Quintet in C Major is one of the glories of the chamber music repertory and one of Schubert’s finest works. Yet he never heard a note of it. It lay in manuscript for years and was not performed until 1850, twenty-two years after his death.

Program notes by Eric Bromberger

Variations on “Bei Männern, welche Liebe fühlen” for Piano and Cello, WoO46 Ludwig Van BEETHOVEN

Born December 16, 1770, Bonn
Died March 26, 1827, Vienna

Mozart’s The Magic Flute had been premièred only fourteen months before Beethoven arrived in Vienna in November 1792, and–like so many others–the young composer soon fell under its spell: it remained his favorite Mozart opera throughout his life, and in fact he much preferred it to The Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni. So great was this affection that Beethoven twice turned to The Magic Flute for themes on which to write variations. In 1796 he wrote Twelve Variations on “Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen” for cello and piano, and in 1801–at the same time he was writing the “Moonlight” Sonata–Beethoven came back to the opera and composed a set of variations for cello and piano on “Bei Männern, welche Liebe fühlen.”

In the opera, “Bei Männern” comes near the end of Act I when Pamina and Papageno sing a love-duet: its first lines are “A man who feels the pangs of loving, He will not lack a gentle heart.” The duet is built on a graceful and flowing melody in 6/8; Beethoven preserves its original key of E-flat major but changes Mozart’s marking Andantino to Andante. In a nice touch, Beethoven has the piano take Pamino’s initial statement, and the cello enters with Papageno’s answer; both statements are already slightly varied from Mozart’s original version in the opera. There follow seven brief variations. The emphasis here is on melodiousness and grace rather than virtuosity, and Beethoven’s variations sparkle with some of the glowing spirit and fun of Mozart’s opera.

Quintet in A Major for Clarinet and Strings, K. 581 Wolfgang Amadeus MOZART

Born January 27, 1756, Salzburg
Died December 5, 1791, Vienna

While Mozart reportedly did not care for the sound of the flute, he felt a special fondness for the clarinet. He first heard the newly-invented instrument at the age of seven, while on a visit to Mannheim, and his fascination with the clarinet’s mellow sonority and wide range stayed with him throughout his life. Mozart was one of the first composers to use the clarinet in a symphony, and the instrument figures prominently in such important late works as his Symphony No. 39 (1788) and the operas Così fan tutte (1790) and La Clemenza di Tito (1791).

Part of Mozart’s fascination with the clarinet late in life resulted from his friendship with the Austrian clarinet virtuoso Anton Stadler (1753-1812), one of the composer’s fellow Freemasons in Vienna. It was for Stadler that Mozart wrote his three great works featuring the clarinet: the Trio, K.498, the Quintet, K.581, and the Concerto, K.622. Stadler played the basset horn, a clarinet-like instrument of his own invention, which could play four pitches lower than the standard clarinet of Mozart’s day. This unfortunately resulted in a number of corrupt editions of Mozart’s works for Stadler, as editors re-wrote them to suit the range of the standard clarinet. Subsequent modifications have given the A clarinet those four low pitches, and today we hear these works at the pitches Mozart originally intended.

Mozart wrote the Clarinet Quintet during the summer of 1789, just before he began work on Così fan tutte, finishing the score on September 29; the Quintet had its first performance in Vienna the following December 22, with Stadler as soloist and Mozart a member of the quartet. Simple verbal description cannot begin to suggest the glories of the Quintet–this is truly sovereign music, full of the complete technical mastery of Mozart’s final years and rich with the emotional depth that marks the music from that period. The strings have the first theme of the Allegro, and the clarinet soon enters to embellish this noble opening statement. The second subject, presented by the first violin, flows with a long-breathed lyricism, and the movement develops in sonata form. The Larghetto belongs very much to the clarinet, which weaves a long cantilena above the accompanying strings; new material arrives in the first violin, and the development section is Mozart at his finest. Particularly impressive here is the careful attention to sonority, with the silky sound of muted strings set against the warm murmur of the clarinet. The Menuetto is unusual in that it has two trio sections: the minor-key first is entirely for strings, while in the second the clarinet evokes the atmosphere of the Austrian countryside with a ländler-like dance. In place of the expected rondo-finale Mozart offers a variation movement based on the violins’ opening duet. The five variations are sharply differentiated: several feature athletic parts for the clarinet, the fourth is a soaring episode for viola over rich accompaniment from the other voices, and the fifth is an expressive Adagio. The Clarinet Quintet concludes with a jaunty coda derived from the first half of the original theme.

Twelve Variations for Cello and Piano on“Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen,” Opus 66 Ludwig Van BEETHOVEN

When Beethoven arrived in Vienna in 1792, composers did not generally regard the cello as a melodic or solo instrument. Young Beethoven, however, was interested in the cello, and in 1796 he wrote two sonatas and two sets of variations for cello: Twelve Variations for Piano and Cello on a Theme from Handel’s Judas Maccabeus and a set based on the aria “Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen” from Mozart’s The Magic Flute, which had been composed only five years earlier. The Magic Flute was always Beethoven’s favorite among Mozart’s operas, and it is no surprise that when he came to write variations he should turn to a favorite opera and a familiar tune. Beethoven did not immediately publish the variations on “Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen,” and they were eventually assigned a misleadingly high opus number–this music is actually comtemporaneous with his Opus 2 piano sonatas.

Papageno sings “Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen”–with its famous glockenspiel accompaniment–near the end of the the second act of The Magic Flute. The theme sets the words “Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen/Wunscht Papageno sich” (“For maiden or a woman/Doth Papageno yearn”). Beethoven’s twelve variations on this infectious tune are straightforward and quite compact–the entire set lasts barely ten minutes. Most immediately striking are the two slow variations: X (Adagio) and XI (Poco Adagio quasi Andante). Here Beethoven suddenly shifts to a somber F minor and wrings a degree of genuine pathos from Mozart’s tune before the final variation returns to F major and flows cheerfully to its quiet close.

String Quintet in G Minor, K. 516 Wolfgang Amadeus MOZART

In the spring of 1787, Mozart–then 31–was at the height of his powers. The previous year had seen the triumphant première of The Marriage of Figaro, and now he was about to begin work on Don Giovanni. But before he plunged into the opera, Mozart wrote two viola quintets. The string quartet gave Mozart unusual problems throughout his life, but the addition of one extra instrument–the instrument Mozart preferred to play in chamber music–unlocked some of his greatest music. Perhaps the richer instrumental texture stirred his creative powers in unusual ways. Perhaps it was the distinctive sound of the violas. Perhaps it was the new possibilities for playing combinations of instruments off against each other. Who knows?

The Quintet in G Minor, completed on May 16, 1787, is one of Mozart’s finest works and certainly one of the greatest pieces of chamber music ever written. Everyone who hears this music senses its intensity, and Mozart’s biographers have looked for causes in the composer’s own life. While this was the period of his father’s final illness (Leopold Mozart died on May 28), any connection between this and the music must remain conjectural. What is clear is that into this quintet Mozart poured a depth of expression heard in very little of his other music. In the darkness of its character, the range of its moods, and the compression of the writing, it is often compared to another of Mozart’s great works in G minor, the Symphony No. 40, composed the followingyear. One of the distinguishing technical features of the quintet is Mozart’s constant chromatic writing, and in particular the falling chromatic lines of much of the melodic material give the music extraordinary emotional power.

The dark and grieving opening theme of the Allegro, heard immediately in the first violin and quickly repeated by the first viola, climbs and then falls back, and this same rising-and-falling melodic motion recurs throughout the movement: it gives shape to the second subject, also introduced by the first violin and also–curiously–in the home key of G minor. Just as remarkable is the steady beat of the accompanying voices: these constant eighth-notes–always pulsing forward–give the music another dimension of urgency. The development is relatively short, but Mozart then offers a long recapitulation and a substantial coda that remains in G minor.

The minuet-and-trio comes second in this quartet, rather than in the expected third position. The cheerful rhythmic spring that marks most minuets is absent here, and Mozart defeats expectations by placing his strongest accents on the third beat of some of his measures. The trio section, in G major, seems to let in a brief flood of sunlight, but Mozart further enforces the sense of compression by basing this trio on a theme taken from the minuet.

The Adagio ma non troppo plunges us into a different world entirely, so unexpected is its sound. Mozart mutes the five instruments throughout, and this movement is remarkable for both its rich sonority and the variety of its moods. Each of the its three themes is radically different, and each generates its own emotional world: the stately opening gives way to a grieving second subject (once again based on falling chromatic lines) which in turn is displaced by an the oddly-dancing–almost carefree–third idea. Beneath its muted surface, this music wears many faces, moves through many moods.

The final movement begins with another Adagio, now unmuted: the first violin arches high and falls back over the quietly-throbbing accompaniment. In a sense, this introduction is the emotional climax of the entire quintet, for it gives way to a good-natured rondo-finale in G major. Many have found this cheerful finale anticlimactic after the first three movements and the introduction to the last, and Mozart himself was aware of this problem: he made sketches for a finale that remained in G minor, but discarded them. He was probably right to do so. The quintet clearly needs some emotional release at this point, and this finale serves that purpose well (it is worth noting, too, that the main theme of this rondo bears some relation to the opening theme of the first movement, reinforcing one more time the sense of compressed intensity that informs the entire quintet).

Long after the rondo has come dancing home in sunny G major, however, it is to the opening movements that one’s memory returns. And particularly to the quintet’s very beginning, where that painful, surging violin melody stays to haunt the mind.

Program notes by Eric Bromberger

Two Pieces for String Octet, Opus 11 Dmitri SHOSTAKOVICH

Born September 25, 1906, St. Petersburg
Died August 9, 1975, Moscow

When Shostakovich died in 1975, he was remembered primarily as a symphonist, but the last several decades have seen new interest in his chamber music, particularly the impressive cycle of fifteen string quartets. Shostakovich came to the string quartet relatively late in life, but as a very young man he had experimented with chamber music, composing a piano trio at 17 and the Two Pieces for String Octet at 18, while he was still a conservatory student.

From this same period came Shostakovich’s dazzling First Symphony, Opus 10, and in fact he worked on the symphony and the Two Pieces simultaneously. The Two Pieces are in the same neo-classical manner as the symphony. Shostakovich scored this music for string octet, specifically the same double string quartet that another teenaged composer, Felix Mendelssohn, had used in his Octet. The form can seem strange: this brilliant, bittersweet music consists of two contrasting and unrelated movements, both characterized by high energy levels.

Composed in December 1924, the Prelude is dominated by the powerful sequence of ominous chords heard at the very beginning. This movement is episodic, with sharply contrasting passages for muted triplets, pizzicato chords, and a virtuoso part for the first violin before closing on a quiet unison D. The Scherzo, written in July 1925, is much more acerbic. It too is episodic, though here the thematic material tends to be short and angular. The fiery main idea, announced by the first violin, rushes this movement to its sudden, powerful close.

The Two Pieces for String Octet were first performed in Moscow on January 9, 1927, by the combined Glière and Stradivarius Quartets.

Piano Quartet (2010) Cynthia Lee WONG

Born 1982

A NOTE FROM THE COMPOSER:

The Piano Quartet is an exploration of darkness, silence, and inner space. While composing this work, I read Edgar Allan Poe’s sorrowful and haunting Ligeia for inspiration. I was struck not only by the emotionalism of the story, which dramatizes the loss of a loved one, but I was fascinated by the unhurried, musical flow of Poe’s writing. While composing the Piano Quartet, I allowed a certain slowness into the process. At the same time, I sought to give a few chosen ideas the space and breathing room necessary to manifest as their most beautiful and perfect forms.

I am honored to dedicate this piece to Marc Neikrug, and this performance to the memory of my father, who passed away last spring.

-Cynthia Lee Wong

String Quartet in G Major, Opus 77, No. 1 Franz Joseph HAYDN

Born March 31, 1732, Rohrau, Austria
Died May 31, 1809, Vienna

Haydn turned the string quartet into a great form. Music for two violins, viola, and cello had been written for years–usually as background or entertainment music–but in his cycle of 83 quartets Haydn transformed the quartet into an ensemble of four equal partners, wrote music that demanded the greatest musicianship and commitment from all four performers, and made the quartet the medium for some of his most refined expression. His quartet-writing, however, came to an end in the late 1790s. Haydn had just returned from two quite successful visits to London, and now–in his mid-sixties–he was losing interest in purely instrumental music. He would write no more symphonies and would instead devote his final years to vocal music: from these last years came his oratorios The Creation and The Seasons, as well as the great masses.

Just as he was embarking on these new directions, Haydn completed the two string quartets of his Opus 77 (and actually began one more, destined to remain unfinished). Commissioned by Prince Lobkowitz, who would later be Beethoven’s patron, the two Opus 77 quartets of 1799 represent the culmination of a lifetime spent developing and refining the form: the Quartet in G Major performed on this concert is widely considered one of Haydn’s finest, and that is saying a great deal. Audiences might best approach this quartet by listening for the many signs of a master’s touch: the liberation of all four voices, the rapid exchanges of melodic line between them, and the beautifully idiomatic writing for all four instruments–including the often-neglected viola.

The opening Allegro moderato is in the expected sonata form, though with some original thematic touches: the main subject is a genial march-like tune–the steady 4/4 pulse of this march strides along easily throughout the movement. The second subject is hardly a theme at all, just a flowing two-measure figure that moves between the two violins–it is a measure of Haydn’s mature mastery that he can find so much in such simple material. The Adagio is built on a single theme, which is then repeated, growing more elaborate with each recurrence. The brisk minuet (its marking is Presto!) sends the first violin soaring from the bottom of its range to the very top, while the trio makes a surprising leap from the minuet’s G major to the unexpected key of E-flat major, which in turn slides into C minor as it goes. The finale, also marked Presto, is a miniature sonata-form movement that blisters along at a pace that makes it feel almost like a perpetual-motion. Some suspect that Haydn derived its central theme from a Hungarian folksong, but–whatever its origin–this movement is a real showcase for the first violin, and Haydn demands sparkling, athletic playing from all four players throughout this movement.

String Quartet in C-sharp Minor, Opus 131 Ludwig Van BEETHOVEN

Born December 16, 1770, Bonn
Died March 26, 1827, Vienna

Beethoven had been commissioned in 1822 by Prince Nikolas Galitzin of St. Petersburg to write three string quartets, though he had to delay them until after he finished the Missa Solemnis and the Ninth Symphony. He completed the three quartets for Galitzin in 1825, but those quartets had not exhausted his ideas about the form, and he pressed on to work on another. Begun at the end of 1825, the Quartet in C-sharp Minor was complete in July 1826. This is an astonishing work in every respect. Its form alone is remarkable: seven continuous movements lasting a total of forty minutes. But its content is just as remarkable, for this quartet is an unbroken arc of music that sustains a level of heartfelt intensity and intellectual power through every instant of its journey. This was Beethoven’s favorite among his quartets.

On the manuscript he sent the publisher, the composer scrawled: “zusammengestohlen aus Verschiedenem diesem und jenem” (“Stolen and patched together from various bits and pieces”). The alarmed publishers were worried that he might be trying to palm off some old pieces he had lying around, and Beethoven had to explain that his remark was a joke. But it is at once a joke and a profound truth. A joke because this quartet is one of the most carefully unified pieces ever written, and a truth because it is made up of “bits and pieces”: fugue, theme and variations, scherzo, and sonata form among them.

The form of the Quartet in C-sharp Minor is a long arch. The substantial outer movements are in classical forms, and at the center of the arch is a theme-and-variation movement that lasts a quarter-hour by itself. The second and third and the fifth and sixth form pairs of much shorter movements, often in wholly original forms.

The opening movement is a long, slow fugue, its haunting main subject laid out immediately by the first violin. There is something rapt about the movement (and perhaps the entire quartet), as if the music almost comes from a different world. In a sense, it did. Beethoven had been completely deaf for a decade when he wrote this quartet, and now–less than a year from his death–he was writing from the lonely power of his musical imagination. Molto espressivo, he demands in the score, and if ever there has been expressive music, this is it. The fugue reaches a point of repose, then modulates up half a step to D major for the Allegro molto vivace. Rocking along easily on a 6/8 meter, this flowing movement brings relaxation–and emotional relief–after the intense fugue. The Allegro moderato opens with two sharp chords and seems on the verge of developing entirely new ideas when Beethoven suddenly cuts it off with a soaring cadenza for first violin and proceeds to the next movement. The Allegro moderato seems to pass as the briefest flash of contrast–the entire movement lasts only eleven measures.

The longest movement in the quartet, the Andante ma non troppo e molto cantabile is one of its glories. Beethoven presents a simple theme, gracefully shared by the two violins, and then writes six variations on it. At times the variations grow so complex that the original theme almost disappears; Beethoven brings it back, exotically decorated by first violin trills, at the very end of the movement. Out of this quiet close explodes the Presto, the quartet’s scherzo, which rushes along on a steady pulse of quarter-notes; this powerful music flows easily, almost gaily. Beethoven makes use of sharp pizzicato accents and at the very end asks the performers to play sul ponticello, producing an eerie, grating sound by bowing directly on the tops of their bridges.

There follows a heartfelt Adagio, its main idea introduced by the viola. Beethoven distills stunning emotional power into the briefest of spans here: this movement lasts only 28 measures before the concluding Allegro bursts to life with a unison attack three octaves deep. In sonata form, this furiously energetic movement brings back fragments of the fugue subject (sometimes inverted) from the first movement. It is an exuberant conclusion to so intense a journey, and at the very end the music almost leaps upward to the three massive chords that bring the quartet to its close.

Program notes by Eric Bromberger

Concerto Grosso in D Major, Opus 6, No. 4 Arcangelo CORELLI

Born February 17, 1653, Fusignano, Italy
Died January 8, 1713, Rome

Corelli’s set of twelve concerti grossi, Opus 6, was published in 1714, the year after his death. They had probably been written a number of years earlier, and there is evidence that he spent his final years revising these concertos for publication, in the process making them more brilliant and virtuosic. In all twelve concertos, the concertino consists of the same three soloists: two violins and a cello. Corelli further specifies that while these soloists are obligatory, the orchestral accompaniment is optional, which makes clear an interesting feature of this music: the orchestral accompaniment merely doubles the soloists’ music, at times dropping out to let them shine on their own. While this music could be performed by the soloists alone, it is much more interesting with the orchestral accompaniment, which adds weight to the textures and sometimes provides echo effects to the soloists’ line.

The Concerto No. 4 in D Major performed on this concert is in four movements, in contrast to the rest of the Opus 6 concertos, which generally have five or six. The first movement begins with a four-bar Adagio of gradated dynamics that serves simply to set up the main body of the movement, marked Allegro; in binary form, this puts the spotlight firmly on the two violin soloists. The brief second movement, an Adagio, proceeds along a steady progression of eighth-notes; soloists and orchestra play in unison here. In the following Vivace, the soloists re-emerge from that texture: the two violins share the melodic line while the cello scurries along beneath them. The concluding Allegro falls into several sections. It begins as a binary-form movement in 2/4, full of dancing triplets, but Corelli appends a further Allegro section which races (in 4/4) to the firm concluding chords.

Concerto in E-flat Major for Two Horns Georg Philipp TELEMANN

Born March 14, 1681, Magdeburg, Germany
Died June 25, 1767, Hamburg

Telemann has been called The Complete Musician, and for good reason. Not only did he teach himself to compose, he also taught himself to play the violin, doublebass, flute, oboe, clavier, organ, and numerous other instruments. Over his 86 years, he composed 6000 works, including 1700 cantatas, 600 overtures, 45 passions, and hundreds of concertos and sonatas. Telemann appears also to have been The Complete Human Being: trained as a lawyer, he helped write Germany’s first copyright laws, composed many of the texts he set to music, was an ardent amateur botanist, fathered ten children, and (not surprisingly) wrote three separate autobiographies.

During his forty years as music director of the city of Hamburg (1721-1767), Telemann was called upon to supply many different kinds of music, and one of these was Tafelmusik, or “table music”: music intended to accompany banqueting or feasting. Telemann published three different sets of Tafelmusik, each containing various kinds of music (orchestral and chamber) suitable for festive mealtimes.

The horn for which Telemann wrote was not the modern valved French horn but the natural horn, a valveless loop of metal tubing with a mouthpiece at one end and a bell at the other. This was an extremely difficult instrument to play–performers produced different pitches by varying lip pressure or adjusting the position of their hand in the bell, and some notes in particular keys were impossible. This horn had a brighter, more piercing sound than the modern horn.

Telemann’s Concerto in E-flat Major must have made a splendid accompaniment to a banquet. The opening Maestoso (“majestic”) proceeds at a stately tempo. It is based on an exchange between the two soloists and two violinists from the orchestra, and Telemann plays to each instrument’s strength: the horns have noble calls, while the violins offer a busy accompaniment. The powerful Allegro is built on firmly-syncopated accents; much of the horn parts here are very high. The final movement is really two movements played without pause. The slow introduction (Grave is as much an indication of character as tempo here) features a prominent violin solo punctuated by fierce horn attacks. A modulation leads directly into the bright finale, where the writing for the two soloists recalls (no doubt intentionally) the orchestral horn’s ancestor: the hunting horn.

Concerto in C Major for Oboe, Strings and Continuo, RV. 447 Antonio VIVALDI

Born March 4, 1678, Venice
Died July 26/7, 1741, Vienna

Vivaldi was one of the most famous composers of his era. His music was performed and published throughout Europe, and his ideas about concerto form influenced many composers, including Bach. Vivaldi himself was a brilliant violinist, and he claimed to have written ninety operas. Yet for all his fame, Vivaldi supported himself with a surprisingly prosaic day-job: for nearly forty years (1704-1740) he was music director of the Ospedale della Pietà, a sort of convent-music school for illegitimate, abandoned, or orphaned girls in Venice. The city fathers of Venice believe that teaching these girls to play an instrument would give them a useful skill, rescue them from a life of poverty, and keep them from becoming burdens on the state. It was largely for the use of the girls of the Ospedale that Vivaldi wrote his 450 concertos. Most of these were for violin, but Vivaldi also wrote a number of concertos for wind instruments and string orchestra (the Ospedale had some distinguished wind teachers), and among these are twenty concertos for oboe, string orchestra, and continuo.

The Concerto in C Major is in the expected three-movement form that Vivaldi favored, though he springs a surprise in the finale. The opening Allegro bursts to life with a grand flourish for the orchestra, though this ritornello theme will return only sparingly. Most of the first movement is given to passages for the solo oboe, and their difficulty suggests just how proficient the girls of the Ospedale must have been: the soloist must master lengthy sequences of swirling triplets, long runs, trills, and wide leaps. Vivaldi moves to E minor for the Larghetto; after its stately introduction, the orchestra provides minimal accompaniment to the oboe’s long lyric lines. Rather than concluding with the expected Allegro movement, Vivaldi instead casts the finale as a minuet. The orchestra opens the movement with the minuet theme, and the oboe enters to offer a series of variations on that theme. These take a variety of forms: at one point the music moves unexpectedly into E-flat major, another variation is cast entirely in very rapid 32^nd-note runs, and the entire movement demands playing of the highest order from the soloist. Vivaldi rounds things off by having the orchestra recall the minuet theme in its original form.

Pièces en Concert François COUPERIN

Born November 10, 1668, Paris
Died September 11, 1733, Paris

At the age of fifteen, François Couperin became the organist for King Louis XIV, and he remained in service to the royal family for decades thereafter: he performed for the king, taught the princes and princesses to play the harpsichord, and put on a series of Sunday afternoon concerts of chamber music at the palace. These Concerts royaux, begun for the aging Louis XIV, continued after his death and the succession of the young Louis XV in 1715. The present Pièces en concert is a collection of individual movements by Couperin, some of them first performed at these royal concerts, which were arranged two centuries later as a brief suite for cello and strings by Paul Bazelaire. Bazelaire (1886-1958) was a virtuoso cellist and a professor at the Paris Conservatory who as a young man came to know and love the music of Couperin. At that time, Couperin’s music was little-known to general audiences, and Bazelaire wanted to find a way to make it more familiar. He chose these five movements from Couperin’s many works, arranged them for solo cello and a string ensemble (either quartet or string orchestra), and published this set in 1924 under the name Pièces en concert. Such arrangements would be almost unthinkable today in this age of historical purity, but Bazelaire’s motives were generous: he simply wished to find a way to bring this attractive (and unfamiliar) music to audiences, and he could take consolation from the fact that Couperin himself would probably not have minded such arrangements at all.

The Prélude is music of quiet nobility, as the cello’s long line leads the way over dotted accompaniment. As its name suggests, a Sicilienne is of Sicilian origin: it is a slow dance characterized by a swaying rhythm; this one, in binary form, rocks along gently on its 12/8 meter as the theme makes terraced entrances. La Tromba means “The Trumpet,” and the sound of trumpet calls echo through this sharp-edged music, which is also in binary form. The Plainte (“Lament”) features an important part for solo viola: solo viola and cello have a long muted duet that sings sadly on slow dotted rhythms. These two soloists drop out for the center section, where the two violin lines sing their grieving lines over pizzicato accompaniment; the soloists return to round the movement off with the opening music. The Pièces en concert concludes with the Air de Diable, marked “Quickly.” To modern ears there is nothing too diabolic-sounding about this music, which skips along on some very animated music and soon brings this collection to a vigorous–and sonorous–close.

Concerto in B-flat Major for Harp and Strings, Opus 4, No. 6 George Frideric HANDEL

Born February 23, 1685, Halle, Germany
Died April 14, 1759, London

Many listeners will discover that they already know this endlessly graceful music, but as a concerto for organ and orchestra, and thereby hangs a tale. During the 1730s, when Handel made his reluctant (but fortunate) transition from opera to oratorio, he felt that he needed something to entertain his audiences between the different parts of oratorios. He had on hand the organ used to accompany choruses during the oratorios, and this led to his composing organ concertos to be performed between the acts. This entr’acte music could be elaborate: during a performance of the oratorio Alexander’s Feast in 1736, the interpolated pieces included a concerto grosso, an organ concerto, and a harp concerto. This harp concerto was later rewritten and published as an organ concerto, but in its original form for harp it had a very specific purpose in Alexander’s Feast.

That oratorio is based on an ode by the same name, written in 1697 by the English poet John Dryden. Alexander’s Feast tells of the victory banquet put on by Alexander the Great to celebrate his conquest of Persia. At this banquet, the playing of the musician Timotheus on the flute and lyre so overpowers Alexander that he rushes out to avenge Greeks slain in earlier battles. Handel placed the Harp Concerto near the beginning of Alexander’s Feast as a demonstration of Timotheus’ powers on the lyre, and it was originally intended to follow the lines in the oratorio:

Timotheus placed on high,
Amid the tuneful Quire,
With flying Fingers touch’d the Lyre;
The trembling Notes ascend the Sky,
And heav’nly Joys inspire.

Two years later, in 1738, Handel decided to gather a group of organ concertos he had performed during his oratorios and publish them. Recognizing how good the music of the Harp Concerto was–and how easily it might be adapted for organ–he arranged it as an organ concerto, and it was published as the sixth concerto of his Opus 4.

In either version, this is delightful music, delicate in texture and expression. Handel provides a very restrained accompaniment: the orchestra usually announces the main theme and then offers unobtrusive accompaniment to the extended harp solos.

Concerto in G Minor for Two Cellos and Strings, RV. 531 Antonio VIVALDI

Given the current passion for the music of Vivaldi, it is hard to believe that two generations ago his music was barely known. In The Victor Book of the Symphony (1935), Charles O’Connell airily dismissed Vivaldi with the following appraisal: “Music by Vivaldi is not the kind that makes audiences stand up and cheer, nor is it noted in this book because it is so often played. However, it is of such historical importance, and so charming, that it is programmed occasionally; and certainly should have some attention if for no other reason than its marked influence on the music of succeeding composers.” The Vivaldi boom began after World War II with the sudden popularity of The Four Seasons and shows no sign of letting up. Audiences these days do, in fact, stand up and cheer the music of Vivaldi.

It is virtually impossible to date Vivaldi’s compositions precisely, and the exact date of this concerto is unknown. It is in the standard fast-slow-fast sequence of movements of the baroque concerto, and the writing for the two soloists–who play almost non-stop throughout this brief concerto–is graceful and idiomatic if not unusually virtuosic. Of particular interest is the way Vivaldi handles the solo instruments: sometimes the two cellos play in unison, sometimes they are a third apart; sometimes they trade phrases, sometimes they take turns accompanying each other. The first Allegro opens with an athletic figure for the first cello, repeated canonically by the second, over bare accompaniment from the orchestra. This movement is characterized by its rapid succession of sixteenth-notes, with the cellos dominating the texture. The cellos also dominate the brief Adagio (only seventeen measures long without repeats), which is virtually a duet for soloists over very quiet orchestral accompaniment. The blazing Allegro finale returns to the mood of the first movement. Soloists play in unison throughout the brilliant opening passage and are soon trading phrases before the rush to the conclusion, which is a variation of the animated opening.

Concerto in D Major for Three Violins, BWV 1064 (arr. Baumgartner) Johann Sebastian BACH

Born March 21, 1685, Eisenach, Germany
Died July 28, 1750, Leipzig

Bach became Cantor of the Thomaskirche in Leipzig in 1723 and plunged into the composition of church music, for long periods writing a new cantata every week. In 1729, at a point when he was exhausted by these labors and by constant squabbling with the Leipzig civic authorities, Bach was ready for a change. That year he was named music director of the Collegium Musicum, and it was with relief and enthusiasm that he took up these duties. The Collegium Musicum was a small orchestra that corresponded somewhat to the modern university-community orchestra: it consisted of professionals, amateurs, and students who rehearsed weekly and performed orchestral music. Bach threw himself into his new duties, and the Collegium Musicum performed a great deal: the orchestra gave concerts on Wednesday from 4 to 6 P.M. in the coffee-garden before the “Grimmisches Thor” in the summer and on Fridays from 8 to 10 P.M. in Zimmerman’s coffee-house in the winter.

Bach quickly discovered that he needed music for this orchestra to perform, and in particular he needed keyboard concertos, so he arranged as harpsichord concertos a number of works he had written earlier. One of the works he presented in Leipzig was a Concerto in C Major for Three Harpsichords and Orchestra, probably with the composer and his teenaged sons Wilhelm Friedemann and Carl Philipp Emanuel at the keyboards. Research has revealed that this keyboard concerto is an arrangement of what had originally been a concerto for three violins and orchestra, probably composed during Bach’s years as Kapellmeister at Cöthen (1717-1723). The concerto is heard at the present concert in a reconstruction for three violins by the Swiss violinist Rudolf Baumgartner. Bach customarily transposed his violin concertos down a step when arranging them for keyboard, so the reconstruction of the original moves it back up to D major, a particularly resonant and comfortable key for violinists.

The concerto is in the expected three movements in a fast-slow-fast sequence, yet the opening Allegro does not feel especially fast: perhaps aware of the need to keep textures clear in this complex music, Bach writes stately music that unfolds at a noble pace; critics frequently invoke the word “relaxed” to describe this movement’s particular majesty. The Adagio is not the chamber music Bach sometimes wrote as the slow movements of his concertos but is scored for the entire orchestra, and it features some particularly expressive writing for the orchestral violins. The concluding movement is the expected Allegro. Once again, Bach takes care to keep the voices clear, and he varies the movement’s steady pulse with extended passages in triplet rhythms.

Oboe Quartet (2011) Sean SHEPHERD

Born 1979

A NOTE FROM THE COMPOSER:

Many of my richest and most memorable musical experiences have occurred not in the concert hall or the opera house but rather in smaller performance spaces (or even in a large living room), watching a few people in an advanced mode of non-verbal communication convey and interpret this or that profound musical utterance. Chamber music can be pure magic, and the human scale of the medium and the environment have often made—for me, in the best cases—an experience bordering on the ecstatic. Composers who seem to shine with similar brilliance in both micro and macro theatres occur with astounding rarity (to me, anyway); perhaps as composers, we each come with a differently-sized internal megaphone. Someone whom I have always admired for his inspired (and seemingly intuitive) answers to the problem of musical scope, W.A. Mozart, had no problems getting his music to fit the room.

The ideas that grew out of my conversations with Marc Neikrug and the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival began as a tabula rasa—a great but tough commission to start work on (if I can really do anything, what do I really want to do?). I began to settle on one of my personal favorite sounds in chamber music: the solo oboe (I couldn’t tell anyone why), and my mind went toward Mozart’s Oboe Quartet, K. 370. I adore the work’s subtle, intimate choreography and have often pondered the chameleonic role of the oboe, whose responsibilities as soloist are by definition more conciliatory than if it were paired with orchestra. I can’t say that I intend to (or would dare to) replicate anything about his work in a specific way, but as has been the case with Mozart’s music before, I found that revisiting K. 370 has been a natural way to unlock the vault of my ideas about subtle choreographies, conciliation, and the flexibility that great chamber musicians possess. And along the way it’s occurred to me all over again that writing chamber music—and finding the best way to express those intimate musical thoughts—is hard. Or more accurately, that writing compelling chamber music is really hard.

- Sean Shepherd

Quartet La Jolla (2011) John WILLIAMS

Born 1932

A NOTE FROM THE COMPOSER:

The idea for the La Jolla Quartet resulted from a conversation that I had with Cho-Liang Lin at Tanglewood, after we had performed a Mozart concerto together. Cho-Liang, familiar to me for many years as a magnificent artist, delighted me when he told me of his music festival in beautiful La Jolla, California, and when he graciously asked if I would contribute a piece for his festival there. I was gratified and even flattered by his suggestion, and given the usual constraints of my work in film, I was especially grateful for the freedom that he offered in saying… “write for any combination of instruments you wish”… and so, I agreed to contribute what I could. The concept of a quartet comprised of violin, cello, clarinet and harp intrigued me, and so I set out to do a piece that would explore some of the interesting sonorities available in this seldom-heard instrumentation.

The work is in five movements, beginning with an Introduction, which presents declamatory gestures framing some of the contextual parameters of volume, texture and color that we’re about to hear. The second movement, Aubade, explores the harp’s very unique role as the spiritual center and life-enhancing force of the entire piece. The Scherzo is a brief and gossamer flight where the quartet defies gravity as it dips, dives and soars... hopefully without ever touching the ground! The fourth movement, Cantando, gives the clarinet the opportunity to reflect and ruminate to the accompaniment of a steady cello pizzicato, and leads the journey of exploration, finishing with a brief cadenza. And finally in the fifth movement, Finale, the entire group… con brio… collects and gathers its energy to produce a forceful and uplifting finale.

Without the constraints of any programmatic scheme, numerical formulations or procedures, writing this piece was a joy for me. I simply relished the pleasure of exploring the instrumental possibilities that would allow four magnificent artists to display their art.

I have dedicated the entire work to my friend Cho-Liang Lin. However… for the second movement, I wish to acknowledge my debt to harpist Ann Hobson Pilot, who was the inspiration for my Harp Concerto, and who was something of a spiritual guide as I worked on the Aubade movement, which reflects some of my research and preparatory work on the concerto.

Also I have to mention the great clarinetist John Bruce Yeh, whose work in the Chicago Symphony I’ve greatly admired. When John learned that I was writing this piece, he encouraged me to finish it, and when I was told that he was a frequent guest at SummerFest I decided to write the fourth movement, Cantando, expressly for him. Of course, my greatest thanks and deepest indebtedness go to Cho-Liang Lin for having conceived this project, which I hope in some small measure, might reward listeners and players alike.

- John Williams

White Granite (2010) Joan TOWER

Born 1938

A NOTE FROM THE COMPOSER:

White Granite (Piano Quartet) was commssioned by St. Timothy’s Festival Summer Music Festival (in Montana), Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival (in Colorado) and La Jolla Music Society for SummerFest (in California) and was given its world premiere in Georgetown Lake, Montana, on July 11th, 2010 by violinist Peter Zazofsky, violist William Fekenheuer, cellist Michael Reynolds, and pianist Michele Levin.

The 17-minute work is a piece that I enjoyed writing. As a pianist, having the piano present always gives me comfort. The piano, in fact, probably generates most of the background action in the piece - starting with the harmony in the first few measures and continuing with the different motoric ideas that are introduced gradually throughout the piece. In between, there are solos for the other instruments that involve either a falling line (which eventually becomes a rising line) or a “held in place” idea.

Sometimes, all three string instruments are working together to enhance the two kinds of different “actions.” Register and color are also being either generated or enhanced by the presence of the piano. It provides a wonderful environment to the three strings in its ability to provide an “orchestral” type of amplified sound.

- Joan Tower

Program notes by Eric Bromberger

Sonata for Violoncello and Piano, Opus 6 Samuel BARBER

Born March 9, 1910, West Chester, Pennsylvania
Died January 23, 1981, New York City

Samuel Barber appears to have been a natural musician. He began piano studies at age 6, was composing at 7, became a church organist as a teenager, and was so accomplished a baritone that he gave recitals in the United States and Europe, made recordings, and considered a career as a singer. In addition, he studied the cello, and while he was never an active cellist, he retained a lifelong fondness for that instrument.

Barber studied at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia from 1924 until 1932, and he composed his Cello Sonata during his final year there. But the Cello Sonata is in no sense a student work. Already Barber had developed the lyric and dramatic style that characterizes his best work, and he was in these years carried along on a burst of incredible creativity: the previous year had seen the composition of his Overture to The School for Scandal, and over the next few years would come Music for a Scene from Shelley, the First Symphony, and the Adagio for Strings. The Cello Sonata was first performed in New York City on March 5, 1933, four days before the composer’s 23^rd birthday. The cellist was Orlando Cole, cellist of the Curtis Quartet, and the composer was at the piano.

Barber’s fondness for the cello is evident in the idiomatic writing throughout this sonata (he would, in 1945, also write a Cello Concerto). This sonata, which has become one of the most frequently-performed chamber works by an American, needs little detailed comment. The music’s impassioned character is made clear by Barber’s many performance instructions in the score: agitato, intenso, molto appassionato, risoluto, energico, con fuoco. This is an extremely dramatic work, and much of its power comes from Barber’s decision to keep the cello in its resonant lower register, where it can generate a great deal of power.

The dramatic first movement is built on two theme-groups. The first comes at the very beginning, where the cello soars up from the depths of its range; the second, much more lyric, is also announced by the cello. The development section is animated, and at points Barber gives the cello passages of unusual rhythmic freedom; after all the turbulence, however, the ending is quite restrained. The second movement, in ABA form, combines slow movement and scherzo. It opens with a very brief (nine-bar) Adagio; this gives way to a blistering Presto that rips along its 12/8 meter before the opening material returns to bring the movement to a quiet close. The last movement, aptly titled Allegro appassionato, opens with a piano introduction before the cello makes its impassioned entrance. This is the most animated (and loudest) of the movements, and the piano part–massive, pounding, and chordal–is unusually brilliant for chamber music.

Gaspard de la nuit Maurice RAVEL

Born March 7, 1875, Ciboure, Basses-Pyrénées, France
Died December 28, 1937, Paris

Maurice Ravel had a lifelong fascination with magic and the macabre, and they shaped his music in different ways. While still a student at the Paris Conservatory, he fell in love with a curious book written sixty years earlier: Gaspard de la nuit, a collection of prose-poems by Aloysius Bertrand (1807-1841). Bertrand said that these spooky tales from the middle ages were “after the manner of Callot and Rembrandt” (it was an engraving by Callot–“The Huntsman’s Funeral”–that inspired the third movement of Mahler’s First Symphony), and Bertrand gave these tales a further whiff of brimstone by claiming that the manuscript had been delivered to him by a stranger: Gaspard himself, simply an alias for Satan.

Ravel composed his Gaspard de la nuit–a set of three pieces that blend magic, nightmare, and the grotesque–in 1908, at exactly the same time he was writing his collection of luminous fairyland pieces for children, Ma mère l’oye. Ravel’s completed work descends from a curiously mixed artistic ancestry: Bertrand’s prose-poems were originally inspired by the visual arts (paintings, etchings, and woodcuts), and in turn–his imagination enlivened by Bertrand’s literary images–Ravel composed what he called “three poems for piano.” This heterogeneous background makes itself felt in the music, for at its best Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit blends word, image, and sound.

Each of the three pieces in Gaspard de la nuit was inspired by a particular prose-poem, and Ravel included these in the score. But Gaspard de la nuit should not be understood as the attempt to recreate each tale in music; rather, these pieces evoke the particular mood inspired by Bertrand’s prose-poems. Still–there are moments of such detailed scene-painting that one imagines Ravel must have had specific lines in mind as he wrote.

Ondine pictures the water sprite who tempts mortal man to her palace beneath the lake. Ravel’s shimmering music evokes the transparent, transitory surfaces of Bertrand’s text, the final line of which reads: “And when I told her that I was in love with a mortal woman, she began to sulk in annoyance, shed a few tears, gave a burst of laughter, and vanished in a shower of spray which ran in pale drops down my blue window-panes.” It is impossible not to hear a conscious setting of these images over the closing moments of this music, which vanishes as suddenly as the water sprite herself.

Le Gibet (“The Gallows”) evokes quite a different world, and all commentators sense the influence of Poe here (during his American tour of 1928, Ravel made a point of visiting Poe’s house in Baltimore). Bertrand’s text begins with a question: “Ah, what do I hear? Is it the night wind howling, or the hanged man sighing on the gibbet?” He considers other possibilities, all of them horrible, and finally offers the answer: “It is the bell that sounds from the walls of a town beyond the horizon, and the corpse of a hanged man that glows red in the setting sun.” Muted throughout, this piece is built on a constantly-repeated B-flat, whose irregular tolling echoes the sound of that bell.

The concluding Scarbo is a portrait of some bizarre creature–part dwarf, part rogue, part clown–who seems to hover just outside clear focus. The text concludes: “But soon his body would start to turn blue, as transparent as candle wax, his face would grow pale as the light from a candle-end–and suddenly he would begin to disappear.” Ravel’s music–with its torrents of sound, sudden stops, and unexpected close–suggests different appearances of this apparition.

It should be noted that Gaspard de la nuit is music of stupefying difficulty for the performer, and this was by design: Ravel consciously set out to write a work that he said would be more difficult than Balakirev’s Islamey, one of the great tests for pianists. He succeeded brilliantly. From the complex (and finger-twisting) chords of Ondine through the dense textures of Le gibet (written on three staves) and the consecutive seconds of Scarbo, Gaspard de la nuit presents hurtles that make simply getting the notes almost impossible. And only then can the pianist set about creating the range of tone color, dynamics, and pacing that bring this evanescent music to life.

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.

Program notes by Eric Bromberger

Grande Sonate in E Major, Opus 19 Franz Xaver MOZART

Born July 26, 1791, Vienna
Died July 29, 1844, Carlsbad, Czech Republic

The youngest child of Wolfgang and Constanze Mozart, Franz Xaver Mozart was barely four months old when his father died. He studied in Vienna with several of his father’s associates–Hummel and Salieri (who said that the boy had “a rare talent for music” and foresaw a future for him “not inferior to that of his celebrated father”)–and then spent most of his life as a private music tutor in the city of Lwow, in what is now the Ukraine. His name proved a complex heritage. “Franz Xaver” were the first two names of Mozart’s pupil F.X. Süssmayr, and there were rumors that Süssmayr may have been the boy’s father; the situation was not helped when his mother tried to change the boy’s name–after the death of her husband–to “Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Sohn).” That name would have been a crushing burden for even the most lavishly gifted of composers, and Franz Xaver was not that; he wrote a modest amount of music for voice, orchestra, chamber ensembles, and piano that survives largely on the strength of his last name. He was a gifted pianist, though, and at the ceremonies surrounding the unveiling of a monument to his father in Salzburg in 1842, he played his father’s Piano Concerto in D Minor, K.466.

The Grande Sonate in E Major, which exists in versions for either violin or cello, dates from 1820, when Franz Xaver was in the midst of a two-year concert tour throughout central Europe. The opening Allegro bursts to life with a great piano flourish, and quickly the cello joins it for energetic dotted leaps. No one would ever mistake this sonata for the music of Mozart (père)–this music is more flowing, more “romantic,” as befits a composer who was a member of Schubert’s generation. A certain attention to virtuoso display–wide skips and staccato runs–alternates with quieter moments that are sometimes nicely shaded by unexpected changes of key. The development is active and extended.

By contrast, the central Andante espressivo, in B minor, is relatively brief; its main idea, halting on its first appearance, gradually begins to flow more easily. The sonata is rounded off with a rondo marked Allegro vivo. The rondo tune moves smoothly between the two instruments, and some of the episodes turn into exuberant flights. The very ending, with the cello shooting upward across its range, is unusually virtuosic for chamber music.

Trio in E-flat Major, K. 498 “Kegelstatt” Wolfgang Amadeus MOZART

Born January 27, 1756, Salzburg
Died December 5, 1791, Vienna

The year 1786 was unusually busy, even by Mozart’s intense standards. In January he produced his opera Der Schauspieldirektor, then continued work on The Marriage of Figaro, which was completed, rehearsed, and triumphantly produced on May 1. Mozart had interrupted his white-hot labors on the opera to compose two of his finest piano concertos–in A Major, K. 488, and C Minor, K. 491–in March, and then he spent the summer writing chamber music. Over the remainder of 1786, Mozart composed three piano trios. Two were for the normal violin-cello-piano instrumentation, but the Trio in E-Flat Major, K. 498, completed on August 5, 1786, is the exception: it is scored for the unusual combination of clarinet, viola, and piano.

This particular combination of instruments–which eliminates the bright color of the violin’s upper register–led Mozart to compose music suited to the huskier, more subdued range of the clarinet and viola. This is not to suggest that this music is in any way limited. Quite the opposite: faced with the challenge of an unusual combination, Mozart produced some of his most unified and expressive music, and the darker colors of the clarinet and viola give this music a somberness, a seriousness rare even in Mozart’s music.

There are some surprises in this music. The first movement is not the expected Allegro, but a more moderately-paced Andante that is unified tightly around its two themes. The opening figure with its characteristic turn–heard immediately in the viola and piano and soon picked up by the clarinet–is present throughout the movement, sometimes appearing as the accompaniment to the lyric second theme, which is announced by the clarinet. The Menuetto has an unusual form: the minuet itself is fairly straightforward, with the standard two repeats, but it never returns, for the trio section suddenly blooms into powerful life of its own and grows to a length three times that of the minuet section. Mozart must have become fascinated with the possibilities of the simple trio theme, for he develops it at length and with great expressive power: the trio of the middle movement is–curiously enough–the emotional center of the entire work. Particularly interesting is the chromatic development of the theme: long, intense melodic lines turn and twist against each other, often propelled by driving triplets from the viola. The final movement, a rondo, retains some of the energy of the middle movement. The clarinet presents the rondo theme, and the music flies to the conclusion of one of Mozart’s least-known–but finest–chamber works.

A note on a spurious nickname: this music is sometimes referred to as the “Kegelstatt” Trio. Kegelstatt means “skittleground” in German, and–the story goes–Mozart was playing a game of skittles as he wrote this music (skittles is a game somewhat like bowling in which pins are knocked down by a ball or disc). No one knows if that story is true, but the music itself has nothing to do with the game of skittles.

Serenade in B-flat Major, K. 361 “Gran Partita” Wolfgang Amadeus MOZART

This serenade is well nicknamed, for this truly is “grand” music, in both the quantitative and qualitative senses of that term. The title Gran Partita did not originate with Mozart, but it alerts us what lies ahead. This is chamber music, but it is scored for a group of players so big (twelve winds and a doublebass) that it sometimes approaches the sonority of orchestral music. And that title tells us not just about the forces involved but also about the scope of this music: its seven movements stretch out to a span of nearly fifty minutes, making this Mozart’s longest instrumental composition, longer by far than any of his symphonies (and longer than any Brahms symphony, for that matter).

Mozart scores the Serenade in B-flat Major for a unique group of instruments–pairs of oboes, clarinets, basset horns, bassoons, plus four French horns, and (for harmonic support) a doublebass–and we need to pay particular attention to his specific choice of instruments. The basset horn, now considered almost obsolete, was a clarinet-like instrument pitched in F; it could span four octaves and also play four pitches below the standard clarinet. Mozart was particularly fond of this instrument and specified its use in his Requiem and Così fan tutte (the basset-hound was reportedly named after the sound the instrument makes). Further, Mozart divides the four French horns into two pairs, specifying that two must be in F and two in B-flat. He was of course writing for natural horns (without valves), and setting the pairs of horns in different keys increased the number of pitches available and further contributed to the richness of the sound of this music (modern performances of the Gran Partita almost always employ the valved horn).

Mozart did not play a wind instrument, but he appears to have had an instinctive grasp of the particular character of each wind instrument and its possibilities. Here he treats his pairs of winds much like individual characters in a play: each pair has a specific identity, each pair acts and sounds differently than the others, and each pair reacts to the others in unique ways. Sometimes Mozart will use all his instruments at once to create a grand, organ-like richness of sound. More often, though, he divides up his forces, combining and contrasting them in novel way. Sometimes he contrasts the sound of clarinets and basset horns, sometimes he sets the horns in contrast to the reed instruments, sometimes he divides his forces into larger groups and plays them off against each other. Throughout, one senses a composer at the height of his powers, writing for instruments he loves and enjoying all the possibilities he discovers in the process. The result is music that is fun both to play and to hear.

A certain amount of mystery (and misty legend) continues to surround this music. The date of its composition was uncertain for years, and tradition had it that Mozart began to write this Serenade in Munich in 1781 and finished it shortly after moving to Vienna later that year. Recent evidence, though, shows that it is entirely a product of his Vienna years. It was probably written in late 1783 and early 1784, and the first four movements were played at a concert put on in Vienna on March 23, 1784 by the clarinetist Anton Stadler, for whom Mozart would later write his Clarinet Quintet and Clarinet Concerto. As a consequence, the Koechel number for this piece, K. 361, is probably wildly wrong–it should actually be in the mid-400s. Another of the legends is that Mozart loved this music so much that he chose to have it performed at his wedding to Constanze Weber. That makes a good story (and Mozart probably did love this music), but he married Constanze in August 1782, about a year before he began work on the Gran Partita.

Music as readily enjoyable as the Gran Partita requires little detailed description, but a general guide to its seven movements may be useful. The first movement opens with a solemn Largo introduction that makes full use of the opulent sonority available with all thirteen players; the music steps out quickly at the Allegro molto, and Mozart now moves from the grand tutti sound of the Largo to a leaner sonority built on pairs and the recombination of the instruments. The second movement is the first of the two minuets in the Gran Partita, and this one, in G minor, has two separate trio sections. The third movement is a noble Adagio in E-flat major whose nodding, pulsing undercurrent throbs throughout. The fourth movement is the jaunty second minuet, again with two trios–the second of these has a relaxed, Tyrolean character. The Romanze is somewhat similar in mood to the Adagio: it too is in E-flat major and shares some of the same nobility. This movement, however, is in ternary form, and Mozart enlivens matters with a saucy central Allegretto that belongs to the basset horns and bassoons; a substantial coda rounds off this movement.

Some critics have felt that after the exalted heights of the first five movements, the final two fall off a little in quality, but that is for listeners to judge–they are eminently enjoyable music. Mozart actually borrowed the sixth movement from himself: it is an arrangement for the present forces of the second movement of his Flute Quartet in C Major, K. 285b. The eight-bar theme is introduced by the pair of clarinets, and Mozart offers six variations, changing the character of the theme (and the instrumentation) in each variation. Briefest of the seven movements, the concluding Rondo rushes the Gran Partita to its high-spirited close.

Program notes by Eric Bromberger

In addition to the two pieces by Sérgio, The Assad Brothers have built this program on a collection of short works heard in arrangements for two guitars and a variety of other instruments. All of these pieces have distinct national characters, and all are built on the dances and idioms of individual countries. Five of their composers come from South America.

Bandoneón Astor PIAZZOLLA

Born March 11, 1921, Mar del Plata, Argentina
Died July 4, 1992, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Piazzolla is probably the best-known of these five composers. Very early in his life he learned to play the bandoneón, the Argentinean accordion-like instrument that uses buttons rather than a keyboard, and he became a virtuoso on it. He gave concerts, made a film soundtrack, and created his own bands before a desire for wider expression drove him to the study of classical music. In 1954 he received a grant to study with Nadia Boulanger in Paris, and it was that great teacher who advised him to follow his passion for the Argentinean tango as the source for his own music. Piazzolla returned to Argentina and gradually evolved his own style, one that combines the tango, jazz, and classical music. In his hands, the tango was revitalized–Piazzolla transformed this old Argentinean dance into music full of sharply-contrasted moods. His tangos are by turn fiery, melancholy, passionate, tense, violent, lyric, and always driven by an endless supply of rhythmic energy.

Bandoneón was originally the first movement of Piazzolla’s Suite Troileana, composed in 1975. The composer and bandoneónist Anibal Troilo, who had been a mentor to Piazzolla, died in May of that year, and the suite was composed in his memory. In its original form, this tango was scored for Piazzolla’s octet, but it has been heard in countless arrangements, and the arrangement for two guitars by the Assad brothers has become one of the most famous of these.

Epônina Batuque Ernesto NAZARETH

Born March 20, 1863, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Died February 4, 1934, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

The Brazilian popular composer Ernesto Nazareth studied piano as a boy, but his family could not afford to send him to Europe for proper training, so the boy turned to native Brazilian music for his inspiration. Nazareth (pronounced “NazaRAY”) made his early reputation as a pianist in silent movie theaters, and audiences reportedly came more to hear him play than to see the movies. He eventually composed about 300 dances for piano, and this program offers two of these. Epônina, full of quicksilvery key changes, has become well-known in its arrangement for two guitars, in which the melodic line flows easily between the two instruments. Batuque is a tango full of driving energy. It too has become popular in arrangements for guitar and is sometimes performed by ensembles as large as fifteen guitars.

Amparo Stone Flower Antonio Carlos JOBIM

Born January 25, 1927, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Died December 8, 1994, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Antonio Carlos Jobim was trained at first to become an architect, but he gave up that career for music. Universally known by his nickname “Tom”, Jobim was a pianist, guitarist, arranger and singer who eventually made his career in New York City. One of the first practitioners of bossa nova music, Jobim is best remembered for songs like The Girl from Ipanema and Desafinado. The concert features two selections from Jobim’s 1970 album Stone Flower: the expressive Amparo and the bouncy title song Stone Flower.

Invierno Porteño Escualo Verano Porteño Astor PIAZZOLLA

Two of the Piazzolla works on this program have the word porteño in their titles, and the meaning of that word can be elusive. It has come to refer to the port area of Buenos Aires, where the tango was born. By extension, porteños has come to mean anyone or anything native to Buenos Aires. And both examples on this program add the name of a season to their title: Verano (summer) and Invierno (winter). Piazzolla originally wrote both of these tangos for the small ensemble he led in Buenos Aires (violin, piano, electric guitar, bass, and bandoneón), and more recently both these pieces have been orchestrated to form half of Las cuatro estaciones porteñas, a sort of Latin American counterpart to Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons.

Escuelo, by contrast, is an independent piece. That title means “shark,” and this music moves along halting, pulsing rhythms over which the violin has an exotic solo part. The present arrangement for two guitars and violin makes good sense, for Piazzolla’s original version featured this same brilliant role for solo violin.

Romanian Folk Dances Béla BARTÓK

Born March 25, 1881, Nagyszentmiklós, Hungary, Austria-Hungary
Died September 26, 1945, New York City, United States

The one arrangement on this program not from South America is Bartók’s Romanian Folk Dances, which date from 1915. Over the previous six years, Bartók had systematically collected songs and fiddle tunes of Romania, finally gathering over 3500 melodies from that region. The Romanian Folk Dances, concise arrangements and harmonizations of six of these, have become one of his most popular compositions. The Dances exist in many arrangements: for violin and piano, flute, organ, cafe orchestra, and even an ensemble of guitars and accordions; at this concert they are heard in an arrangement for two guitars and violin.

The six brief movements (the final dance, in two sections, is sometimes counted as two movements) come from quite specific parts of Romania, but they share some general features. There is often a steady and powerful chordal accompaniment over which the melodic line, full of syncopations and surprising turns and harmonies, unfolds in long themes. Jocul cu bâta (Dance with Sticks) features a strongly-accented main theme and pungent harmonies. The very brief Brâul (Waistband Dance), from a region now in Yugoslavia, takes its name from the cloth belt worn by the dancers. Pe Loc (which translates “In One Spot”) is a stamping dance in which the dancers do not move from one spot. Buciumeana (Hornpipe Dance) is built on a soaring, rhapsodic melody which is stated and then repeated; there is more than a hint of gypsy fiddling in this movement. The lively Poarca Românească (Romanian Polka), a children’s dance, jumps back and forth between 2/4 and 3/4 throughout, while the concluding Măruntel is a swirling fast dance. In the score, Bartók notes that such a dance uses “very small steps and movements”; given the blistering pace of this music, the dancers would need to use very small steps indeed.

Tahhiyya Li Ossoulina Sérgio ASSAD

Born 1952

NOTE FROM THE COMPOSER:

Tahhiyya Li Ossoulina, which translates from the Arabic as “Homage to our Roots”, is a piece composed for two guitars and based upon Middle Eastern modes. This piece was conceived as a tribute to the composer’s grandparents who immigrated to Brazil in 1895 from Lebanon. The descendents of these first Lebanese are today as much as 6 million people and have contributed greatly to Brazil’s development in multiple areas. This piece was recorded on our most recent album: Jardim Abandonado, released by Nonesuch Records in 2007 and received a nomination for a Latin Grammy as best musical composition of the year.

- Sérgio Assad

A lenda do Caboclo Heitor VILLA-LOBOS

Born March 5, 1887, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Died November 17, 1959, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Born a generation before Piazzolla, Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos might be said to be the one who put South American music on the map. Villa-Lobos was “discovered” by pianist Artur Rubinstein, who performed and recorded his music and encouraged him to go to Paris for further study. Throughout his life, Villa-Lobos was pulled between his love of the great European classical tradition in music and his passion for native Brazilian music–he once claimed that he had “learned music from a bird in the jungles of Brazil.” That fusion of two different traditions proved a fertile one: Villa-Lobos composed about 2000 pieces. A Lenda do Caboclo (“The Legend of the Bronze Indian”) dates from the early 1920s and was originally composed for solo piano, but this music has proven attractive enough that it has been arranged for countless ensembles: orchestra, guitar trios and quartets, as well as the present arrangement for two guitars and cello. The brief piece is in ternary form: it opens quietly on rocking rhythms, and soon its gentle main melody makes a welcome appearance; the middle section grows more animated before the return of the opening material.

Malambo from Estancia Alberto GINASTERA

Born April 11, 1916, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Died June 25, 1983, Geneva, Switzerland

Like Piazzolla, Ginastera was from Argentina, but he was a composer in the “classical” tradition: he wrote operas, concertos, ballets, and chamber and piano music. His early music, however, was distinctly Argentinian in character, and the ballet Estancia is one of the most famous works of his youth. In 1941 Lincoln Kirstein asked the young composer to write a score for his American Ballet Caravan, specifying only that it should have its setting in rural Argentina. Ginastera set to work immediately and completed the score for Estancia (Cattle Ranch) by the end of that year. Set in the countryside of the Argentinian ranchos, Estancia is full of gauchos and beautiful girls, and he incorporated the local folk-music idiom and dance rhythms into the score, which alternates evocative slow movements with blazing dances. The story is simple but timeless: a young gaucho meets a girl, but she in uninterested–only when he proves his skills as a horseman is she won over.

The Malambo has become the most famous part of Estancia–it has been described as “a demonstration of masculinity” by the triumphant young gaucho. Ginastera begins with a shower of sparkling sounds, and soon the dance–built on very short phrases and rushing along above a busy accompaniment–gathers energy and begins to pick up speed. That energy continues without pause as this strident dance drives to its fiery close.

Suite from De Volta As Raizes (Back to our Roots) Sérgio ASSAD

NOTE FROM THE COMPOSER:

It is common to divide the Brazilian cultural pillars into three groups: the native Indian, the African, and the White. This simplistic picture groups under “black-and-white” many shades of grey: Europeans, Arabs, Asians, and several ethnic African groups. The most prominent African immigrants can be grouped into Malês and Banto: the Banto (or Bantu) came from Sub-Saharan Africa while the Malês were Islamized Africans, some from present day Sudan.

Brazilian music is best known as a blend of European and African elements mixed in a new nation’s melting pot. Easily identified African elements are usually rhythms of Banto origin. These rhythms combined with the Western tonal system resulted in a very idiomatic and recognizable musical language evident in the South and Southeast of Brazil. However, a closer look into the music of the Brazilian Northeast shows hints of other less clear influences. The origin of the “escala nordestina” (Northeastern Scale), an exotic mode often used in the states of Bahia and Pernambuco, is veiled in mystery. This mysterious mode has generated a number of speculations including that it could have been brought to Brazil by the Malês slaves with Arabic cultural roots. Some similarities in terms of rhythm are also surprising: the Arab leff and aiubi are very close to the Brazilians côco and baião.

The best documented Arab migration to Brazil started in 1880 and continued throughout the 20th century bringing mainly Syrian and Lebanese immigrants. Nearly two hundred thousand Syrians and Lebanese arrived in Brazil between 1880 and 1930 carrying Turkish passports since Syria and Lebanon were under the Ottoman Empire. Today their descendents comprise about 6 million people spread over the whole country. They are very well-integrated into the Brazilian community and have strongly contributed to many different aspects of the local culture. Middle Eastern last names are common in all kinds of artistic expression in contemporary Brazil. Some very well known Brazilian musicians, such as Egberto Gismonti and João Bosco, are descendents of Lebanese immigrants.

Among the first group of immigrants from Lebanon was our grandfather, Jorge Assad, who arrived in Brazil in 1890. He married Francesca Caggiano, an Italian immigrant, and remained in Brazil the rest of his long life building our very large family. Music became an integral part of our Assad family life, but our training focused on Western music, from traditional Brazilian choros to classical music. Our roots in Arab music were lost with the migration and assimilation of our ancestors.

Recently, we decided to explore this vast and unfamiliar world of Arab music from the point of view of new world citizens whose genes may still have some memory of the sounds familiar to our grandparents. Western music developed harmony and counterpoint based on modality, tonality, and atonality while Arab music remained melodic and based on the very complex microtonal maqam system. In our visit to our roots, we do not attempt to play the traditional music of our grandparents, but we explore the Arab influenced elements on the music that we experienced in the new world as descendents of those first immigrants.

- Sérgio Assad

Program notes by Eric Bromberger

Italian Serenade Hugo WOLF

Born March 13, 1860, Windischgrätz, Slovenia
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 both versions). 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.

Metamorphosen, A Study for 23 Solo Strings (arr. for Seven Strings by Rudolf Leopold) Richard STRAUSS

Born June 11, 1864, Munich
Died September 8, 1949, Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany

Following an air-raid in October 1943 that destroyed the opera houses in Munich where he and Mozart had conducted, Strauss lamented to a friend: “the burning of the Munich Hoftheatre, the place consecrated to the first Tristan and Meistersinger performances, in which 73 years ago I heard Freischütz for the first time, where my good father sat for 49 years in the orchestra as 1^st horn . . . this was the greatest catastrophe which has ever been brought into my life, for which there can be no consolation and in my old age, no hope.” In the stunned aftermath of that bombing, Strauss made a 24-measure sketch of music he tentatively titled Trauer um München (“Mourning for Munich”). Five months later, the firebombing of Dresden leveled a city he particularly loved, incinerating 80,000 people and the city’s cultural treasures. In a letter two weeks after that bombing, he agonized: “I too am in a mood of despair! The Goethehaus, the world’s greatest sanctuary, destroyed! My beautiful Dresden–Weimar–Munich, all gone!”

And it was this composer–80 years old, in declining health, and tormented by the annihilation of an entire way of life–who returned to his sketches of mourning and began to plan a new work for string orchestra. The impetus had come in a commission in July 1944 from conductor Paul Sacher, who was responsible for commissioning Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta and Divertimento, Stravinsky’s Concerto in D, and many other mainstays of the twentieth-century string orchestra repertory. The actual composition of what became Metamorphosen took only one month: Strauss began the score on March 13, 1945, three weeks after the devastation of Dresden, and completed it on April 12, less than a month before the German surrender.

Metamorphosen is a remarkable work, scored for an unusual string orchestra of 23 solo players: ten violins, five violas, five cellos, and three doublebasses; it is heard at this concert in an arrangement for seven strings by Rudolf Leopold. The full title can be misleading. Metamorphosen seems to imply a set of variations, which is not the case, and the subtitle A Study makes the work sound like an exercise in virtuosity, which it is not (though it is difficult enough for the performers!). Rather, this 25-minute composition gives expression to Strauss’ pain in the face of the annihilation of German culture. And what makes Metamorphosen all the more remarkable is that some of its thematic material seems to grow out of the heritage of German music. There are no direct quotations until the very end, but along the way listeners will sense what seem to be misty references to the music of Beethoven and Wagner.

A dark slow introduction for lower strings leads to the violas’ quiet statement of what will be the main subject: the four pulses and inflected descending line of this theme incorporate the theme Strauss had sketched in October 1943 for Trauer um München. Gradually the music grows more intense as Strauss introduces a number of subordinate theme-shapes, and while music for 23 parts can at times become complex, textures remain clear. Strauss reins back the tempo for the climax, which builds to a moment of sudden silence, and slowly the music winds down to its remarkable conclusion. On the final page, in the deep cellos and basses, Strauss quotes the main theme of the Funeral March from Beethoven’s Eroica, which he marks IN MEMORIAM! in the score. Only now do we recognize the close thematic similarity between Strauss’ main theme and Beethoven’s funeral music, and Strauss himself confessed that he had come to see the connection only in the course of composing this music. Beethoven’s theme merges into Strauss’ textures, and Metamorphosen’s painful lament fades into silence on a deep C-minor chord.

Serenata in Vano, FS 68 Carl NIELSEN

Born June 9, 1865, Nørre Lyndelse, Denmark
Died October 2, 1931, Copenhagen

Nielsen made his career in music by working his way up from the bottom. From a poor family, he became a trumpeter in a military band at 14 and supported himself by playing violin in the Royal Danish Opera Orchestra from 1889 to 1905. Later he became a conductor, and it was not until well after his fortieth birthday that he began to achieve fame as a composer. Because Nielsen was so much involved in the performance of music, it is not surprising that his fellow musicians should have been among the first to recognize his talent and to ask him for music. It was in this way that the Serenata in vano came into being.

A group of musicians from the Royal Danish Orchestra was going on tour in 1914, and these string and wind players needed music to perform on this tour. They asked Nielsen for a short piece for the available musicians, and he responded with this eight-minute work for clarinet, bassoon, French horn, cello, and double bass. The droll title means “Serenade in vain,” but no one is quite sure what Nielsen meant by that. The music itself, possessed of a gentleness and the sort of rustic openness that suggests a village band, is charming. It consists of three short, connected sections: an introduction, the serenade itself, and a concluding march.

The work opens Allegro non troppo ma brioso with the two string instruments setting the sturdy rhythm. The clarinet enters with a long and florid theme, marked marcato, and is quickly joined by the bassoon and horn. A more lyric, flowing episode is introduced by the horn and developed by the other instruments. The serenade itself–Un poco adagio–begins gently with a horn and bassoon duet. The music, calm and pastoral, unfolds gracefully and leads without pause to the Tempo di Marcia. Once again the strings set the pace, and the winds quickly join them with the perky march tune. Perhaps this funny little march, full of syncopated melodies and changes in time signature, signals that the serenade is over and the musicians are departing.

Quintet in G Major for Two Violins, Viola, Cello and Bass, Opus 77 Antonin DVORÁK

Born September 8, 1841, Muhlhausen, Bohemia
Died May 1, 1904, Prague

Early in 1875, Antonin Dvořák–at that time 33 years old and still a struggling and unknown musician–wrote a quintet for the unusual combination of string quartet plus double bass. The Quintet was in five movements, and its composition was speeded by Dvořák’s decision to incorporate the slow movement, Andante religioso, from an earlier (and abandoned) string quartet; Dvořák intended that this new work should be his Opus 18, but he did not publish it. Then–three years later–Dvořák became famous almost overnight when his first set of Slavonic Dances carried his name around the world. Over the next decade, as the commissions and conducting assignments took him across Europe, Dvořák found himself in the happy position of trying to keep up with the many requests for more of his music. As a way of satisfying his publisher’s demands, Dvořák turned to music he had written earlier. One of the pieces that he remembered with some affection was the Quintet for strings, and in 1888–thirteen years after its composition–Dvořák returned to this music and thoroughly revised it, excising the Andante religioso movement in the process. He then sent the Quintet off to his publisher, Simrock, in Berlin. Simrock liked the music but did not want to seem to be publishing “old” music, so–over Dvořák’s loud protests–he published it with the misleadingly high opus number of 77, which makes it seem that this is a mature work, composed even later than the magnificent Seventh Symphony of 1885. In fact, the music should have been published with the opus number of 18: the published Quintet is the work of a young man that has been thoroughly revised by the more sophisticated composer that Dvořák became.

The Quintet in G Major is very attractive music, and only the unusual combination of instruments it requires has kept it from being performed more often. The Allegro con fuoco opens with an introduction-like passage that foreshadows the shape of the main theme, which suddenly leaps ahead on its characteristic triplet rhythm. The second subject arrives on springing, staccato bows (Dvořák marks it leggiero: “light”) and in the completely unexpected key of F major. The opening theme dominates the full-throated development, though Dvořák builds the coda on the graceful second theme.

The two middle movements are particularly attractive. The E-minor Scherzo dances along triplet rhythms, and this energetic opening is then set in nice relief by the violin’s somber second idea. This is not, however, the trio section, which arrives somewhat later on a flowing melody, again from the first violin; Dvořák rounds matters off with a repeat of the entire opening section. The Poco Andante, in C major, is endlessly (and effortlessly) lyric; its central section–which sends the first violin soaring high above pulsing accompaniment–is one of the joys of the Quintet, and once again Dvořák concludes with a reprise of the opening material, the music finally arriving on a quiet, radiant C-major chord. The Finale, which Dvořák specifies should be “Very fast,” is spirited and amiable. Its central theme has some of the shape of the main theme of the Scherzo, but this movement is more remarkable for its boundless energy: dotted rhythms, sforzando attacks, resounding unisons, and great chords all help power this attractive music along its way.

Program notes by Eric Bromberger

Hungarian Rhapsody No. 10 in E Minor, S. 244/10 Franz LISZT Born October 22, 1811, Raiding, Hungary
Died July 31, 1886, Bayreuth, Germany

Though he was born in what is now Hungary, Liszt left his homeland as a boy and early declared himself a citizen of Europe at large–his career as a performing virtuoso took him from Ireland to Russia, from Spain to Turkey, and he lived for extended periods in Paris, Switzerland, and Rome. In his late twenties, however, Liszt rediscovered his Hungarian roots. The plight of Hungarian flood victims moved him to give benefit concerts on their behalf, and when he returned to his homeland in 1839, he found himself a national hero. Now, fired with national sentiment, he embarked on a study of Hungarian music and made Hungarian tunes the basis of fifteen Hungarian Rhapsodies largely composed between 1851 and 1853 (later he came back and wrote four more). Since that time, there has been much debate about the authenticity of these tunes, about what is gypsy music and what is not, and about just how Hungarian this music actually is. Such a debate is beside the point, for the real issue is not the source or authenticity of the material but what Liszt does with it, and there is no question that his Hungarian Rhapsodies offer some of his most rousing piano music.

The Hungarian Rhapsody No. 10 was published in 1853, while Liszt was music director at the Weimar court. This music has a distinctive sonority, for much of it is set in the piano’s high register–it is full of the sound of sparkling runs, whispered arpeggios, and whirring passages that imitate the sound of the Hungarian cimbalon. The Rhapsody No. 10 has sometimes pointlessly been nicknamed Preludio, after the marking of its opening section. It is episodic in construction and after its opening flourishes, the music moves firmly ahead at the Andante deciso on a powerful chordal melody, though Liszt is careful to specify that the playing should be dolce con eleganza. He offers plenty of keyboard brilliance along the way: long runs, passages in thirds, sequences of grace notes along with the shimmering high notes so characteristic of this rhapsody. The music presses ahead in its final sections, racing up and down the keyboard and riding along a wave of hammered octaves as it rushes to the extroverted final chords.

Widmung, Opus 25, No. 1 SCHUMANN/LISZT

Liszt made countless piano transcriptions of pieces by other composers so that he might play them on his recitals. Many of these were of big, bravura works (all the Beethoven symphonies and Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique) intended to show off Liszt’s phenomenal technique. But he also transcribed many shorter and less dramatic works, and he was especially drawn to transcribing songs: he made about 160 transcriptions of songs for voice and piano by other composers. These were also for his own use on recitals, but here his motives were at least in part generous: he wanted this music to be better-known. As a young man, Liszt had fallen in love with Schubert’s songs at a time when they were almost unknown, and over a third of his song transcriptions are of Schubert songs. He also transcribed songs by Beethoven, Chopin, and Mendelssohn and a number of other composers he knew.

One of these was Robert Schumann. Liszt set eleven songs by Schumann in the late 1840s (as well as three more by Clara Schumann), and the most famous of these is Widmung, which Liszt transcribed in 1848. Schumann had originally written the song in 1840 and published it as the first of the twenty-six songs that make up his cycle Myrthe, Opus 25. All the songs in that cycle are about love (the title Myrthe means “Myrtles”–in Germany, myrtle branches were traditionally part of bridal wreaths), and Widmung has become one of Schumann’s best-loved songs. That title means “Dedication,” and the text–by Friedrich Rückert–is as pure an expression of romantic love as one will ever find. Over a surging piano part, the gorgeous vocal line declaims a message of love and total commitment. The opening lines give some sense of the nature of the song:

You are my soul, my heart,
you are my joy, and, oh, my pain,
you are the world where I live
and the heaven where I soar . . .

Études, Opus 42

No. 4 in F-sharp Major
No. 5 in C-sharp Minor

Alexander SCRIABIN Born January 6, 1872, Moscow
Died April 27, 1915, Moscow

Scriabin’s 26 Études come from across the span of his career–he wrote the first when he was only fifteen, and his final set comes from 1908, when he was deeply involved in mysticism. The title Étude (“study”) suggests a piece that poses a technical problem, but while Scriabin’s Études can be very difficult, he did not intend them as exercises–each of them creates its own miniature world. He published the eight Études of his Opus 42 in 1903. No. 4 in F-sharp Major (Scriabin’s favorite key) is marked cantabile, and it sets a flowing right-hand melody over steady triplet accompaniment in the left. No. 5 in C-sharp Minor is remarkable for its energy and for the sonority Scriabin is able to generate. He marks this Étude Affannato (“breathlessly”), and it drives along thick textures and complex rhythms to a great climax, then subsides for the quiet close.

Italian Polka Sergei RACHMANINOFF Born April 1, 1873, Semyonov, Russia
Died March 28, 1943, Beverly Hills

In the winter of 1906 Rachmaninoff resigned as conductor at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow and took his wife and daughter to Italy, which would remain a favorite vacation destination for the family. They rented rooms in Florence, and it was there that Rachmaninoff composed a very brief work for piano four-hands that he called Italian Polka. A cousin from Moscow visited them that summer, and she later recalled the incident that produced the Polka:

The streets were sultry; the Venetian blinds remained lowered on windows and doors. The streets were empty. Whenever the heat relaxed a little, the first to appear on the street were a young man, poorly dressed but with a silk top hat and a cane, and a woman in a brightly colored dress. A tiny donkey with very long ears pulled an upright mechanical piano on wheels, and a crib with a baby in it was attached to the piano. The young man sang popular ballads and the woman cranked the piano. They were itinerant musicians. Our favorite number in their repertory was a simple but quite melodious polka. Many years later, when I heard Rachmaninoff’s Polka Italienne, I knew where it had first entered his consciousness.

Rachmaninoff’s Italian Polka, then, is a sort of re-composition for piano four-hands of music he heard the Florentine street-musicians play on their mechanical piano. Its simple tunes and pleasant spirit make clear why it appealed to the Rachmaninoff family, and it may be that composing this music gave Rachmaninoff the chance to compose what in effect became a souvenir of their months in Florence. Rachmaninoff did not publish this music until 1938, and he did not assign it an opus number. He did not feel that it was one of his “official” works, but his evocation of the music he heard on the streets of hot Florence in the summer of 1906 has become a pleasing addition to the literature for piano four-hands.

Piano Trio in E Minor, Opus 67 Dmitri SHOSTAKOVICH

Born September 25, 1906, St. Petersburg
Died August 9, 1975, Moscow

The Nazi invasion of Russia in 1941 was the greatest catastrophe ever to befall any nation. In four years, twenty million Russians died, and the country sustained damage and suffering that no amount of time could fully repair. Shostakovich, then in his late thirties, reacted to the war with two quite different kinds of music. There was the public Shostakovich, who wrote the “Leningrad” Symphony and marches and songs. Patriotic and optimistic, these made the right noises for the time–and for the Soviet government. But the private Shostakovich recorded his reactions to these years in other music. The Eighth Symphony of 1943 and the Piano Trio in E Minor of 1944 reveal a much less optimistic Shostakovich, one anguished by the war. This was not the kind of music a Soviet government committed to the artistic doctrine of Socialist Realism wanted to hear, and it is no surprise that performances of the Trio were banned for a time or that the Eighth Symphony was singled out for particular censure at the infamous meeting of the Union of Soviet Composers in 1948.

Two particular events in the winter of 1944 appear to have inspired this trio. The first came in February, when Shostakovich’s closest friend, the scholar and critic Ivan Sollertinsky, died (the Trio is dedicated to his memory). The second was the discovery–as the Nazi armies retreated–of atrocities committed against Russian Jews. Shostakovich completed the Trio in the spring and played the piano at its first performance in Leningrad on November 14, 1944.

The very beginning of the Andante–an eerie melody for muted cello, played entirely in harmonics–sets the spare and somber mood of this music. The other voices enter in canon, with the main theme of this sonata-form movement a variation of the opening cello melody. The Allegro non troppo opens with fanfare-like figures for the strings. This is one of those hard-driving, almost mechanistic Shostakovich scherzos, and its dancing middle section in G major brings scant relief.

The stunning Largo is a passacaglia. The piano announces eight solemn chords that form the bass-line of the passacaglia, and there follow five repetitions as the strings sing poised, grieving lines above the piano chords. The concluding Allegretto follows without pause. This movement is said to have been inspired by accounts that the Nazis had forced Jews to dance on their graves before execution. Shostakovich does not try to depict this in his music, but the sinister, grotesque dance for pizzicato violin that opens this movements suggests a vision of horror all its own. Shostakovich makes the connection clear with the second theme, of unmistakably Jewish origin, for piano above pizzicato chords. The close brings back themes from earlier movements–the cello melody from the very beginning and the entire passacaglia theme–and finally the little dance tune breaks down and the music vanishes on quiet pizzicato strokes.

No wonder the Soviet government banned performances of this music! The Trio in E Minor is unsettling music, more apt to leave audiences stunned than cheering, and it is a measure of Shostakovich the artist that he could transform his own anguish into music of such power and beauty.

Variations on a Theme of Robert Schumann, Opus 20 Clara SCHUMANN Born September 13, 1819, Leipzig
Died May 20, 1896, Frankfurt

In September 1853, Johannes Brahms–then 20 years old–appeared at the front door of Robert and Clara Schumann in Düsseldorf. The couple was charmed by the young man, his music, and his endless talent, and Robert published an appreciation of Brahms, hailing him as “a young eagle . . . a player of genius who can make of the piano an orchestra of lamenting and loudly jubilant voices.” Overwhelmed by the Schumanns’ respect and affection, Brahms became a virtual member of the household. But this was a troubled time for the Schumann family. Never wholly stable, Robert became delusional in February 1854 and threw himself into the Rhine in a suicide attempt. Rescued by a fisherman, he was placed in a mental asylum where he died two years later.

In the aftermath of the Robert’s incarceration, young Brahms moved in with Clara and her seven children, assisting with the household and visiting Robert in the asylum. It was a stressful time for all involved: Brahms and Clara–both fiercely loyal to Robert–found themselves strongly attracted to each other. On May 27, 1854, three months after Robert was taken to the asylum, Clara played for Brahms her Variations on Theme of Robert Schumann. Moved by this music, Brahms then wrote his own set of variations on that same theme and published it under the same title as his Opus 9. And so we have two sets of variations on the same theme, written in the same household under the same somber conditions at virtually the same time.

The theme of these variations is the fourth movement of a collection of short pieces that Robert had published in 1852 under the title Bunte Blätter, Opus 99. Robert marked this chordal melody Ziemlich langsam (“rather slow”), and his original piece–only 24 measures long–preserves its quiet and expressive character throughout. Clara begins by restating her husband’s brief piece in its entirety, and then she offers seven brief variations on it. These are melodic variations (her husband’s original theme is clear throughout her set), and the variations remain very much within the subdued character of that theme. At the end, the music slips into silence on soft arpeggios.

This was one of Clara’s final compositions. Overwhelmed by her responsibilities to her children and to her declining husband, she would shortly give up composition and devote the rest of her career to performing and to teaching.

Three Mazurkas C Major, Opus 24, No. 2
F Minor, Opus 68, No. 4
B-flat Major, Opus 7, No. 1

Frédéric CHOPIN Born February 22, 1810, Zelazowa Wola, Poland
Died October 17, 1849, Paris

A mazurka is a Polish country dance that originated in the village of Mazovia, near Warsaw. The dance was in triple time, with the accent often on the second (or third) beat rather than the first. In its original form the mazurka was danced by groups of couples who would separate and return; it was sometimes accompanied by the bagpipe. Chopin, who loved this dance, took the general form of the mazurka and used it to write his own music, often quite original in matters of rhythm and harmony.

The four mazurkas of Chopin’s Opus 24 were composed in 1834-35. No.2 in C Major opens with oscillating, almost static chords before a folk tune-like theme leaps to life as the main subject of this brief piece. The dance becomes more heavy-footed in the middle section, which moves into D-flat major, and much of the melodic interest here appears in the pianist’s left hand, with the right offering subdued chordal accompaniment. The surprising ending brings back the oscillating chords of the very beginning, but extends them as the music fades away.

After Chopin’s death in 1849, his publisher Fontana gathered a number of his compositions for posthumous publication. The four mazurkas of Opus 68 were entirely separate works, composed over a 22-year span. The Mazurka in F Minor, the last in the Opus 68 set, is reportedly Chopin’s final composition, composed in 1849 as he lay dying of tuberculosis–the tale is that he was too weak to play this somber work. Its opening is marked sotto voce e legatissimo, and the music flows smoothly and darkly; Chopin, perhaps exhausted, rounds it off with a literal repeat of the first half.

Chopin composed the five mazurkas of his Opus 7 during the 1830-1 season, which he spent in Vienna, his first stop after leaving Poland forever at the age of 20. Vienna proved inhospitable, and it may have been natural under those conditions that Chopin would return to the music of his homeland. No. 1 in B-flat Major, with its high spirits and rhythmic spring, has long been a favorite of audiences and pianists alike. Do we hear the drone of a bagpipe in its second part?

Polichinelle, Opus 3, No. 4 Moments Musicaux No. 4 in E Minor, Opus 16 Sergei RACHMANINOFF

Rachmaninoff graduated from the Moscow Conservatory in 1892 with that school’s highest award, the Great Gold Medal, which was almost never granted. A more practical distinction quickly followed: the publisher Gutheil gave Rachmaninoff a contract and agreed to present his work. It was an extraordinary honor for a 19-year-old composer, and Rachmaninoff’s mentor Tchaikovsky sent the young man a note: “You’re fortunate, Seryozha–you were really born under a lucky star! I was a great deal older than you before I found a publisher, and even then I didn’t receive a kopek for my first published composition. I thought I was lucky not to have to pay the publisher for the privilege.”

That fall Rachmaninoff composed a group of five brief pieces, which were published as his Opus 3 by Gutheil. The title Fantasy Pieces suggests that these pieces have no set form: they are unrelated to each other, and in fact they are often performed separately. The fourth movement in the set, Polichinelle, is a dazzling virtuoso piece full of blistering runs and great leaps. The title, which refers to the commedia dell’ arte character Pulcinella, was an afterthought–it was suggested by Mikhail Slonov, one of Rachmaninoff’s fellow-students at the Moscow Conservatory.

Rachmaninoff wrote the seven pieces of his Moments Musicaux in the fall of 1896, when he was only 23 years old. These seven mood-pieces show signs of a new maturity in Rachmaninoff and begin to point the way toward his later music. This is demanding music technically, and it seems to alternate between two expressive poles: explosive energy on one hand and a somber darkness on the other (four of the six pieces are in minor keys). The fourth piece, marked Presto, takes place in a blur of energy, with the left-hand accompaniment whirling constantly downward before the drive to the abrupt close.

March from The Love for Three Oranges, Opus 33 Serge PROKOFIEV Born April 23, 1891, Sontsovka, Ukraine
Died March 5, 1953, Moscow

The Love for Three Oranges, the first of Prokofiev’s operas to be produced, is both a fantastic tale based on commedia dell’arte figures and a satire of various approaches to writing operas. Prokofiev himself led the première in Chicago in December 1921, but the opera had only a modest success–the lavish production cost $120,000, and one critic archly pointed out that that worked out to $40,000 per orange.

Prokofiev drew a suite of orchestral excerpts from the opera, and one movement from that suite quickly achieved popularity–the March from Act I. In the opera, the Prince is depressed, and the court clown Truffaldino tries to make him laugh; this brief March (which will re-appear throughout the opera) is the music to which the clown leads the Prince out to the festivities. Short, hard-edged, and pithy, the March is made all the more effective by its sudden ending. Those old enough to have grown up listening to the radio will recognize the March as the theme-music for the radio-drama This Is Your FBI. Jascha Heifetz arranged the music for violin and piano and used it as an encore piece.

Islamey Mily BALAKIREV Born January 2, 1837, Nizhny-Novgorod, Russia
Died May 29, 1910, St. Petersburg

From Borodin’s In the Steppes of Central Asia to Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherezade, the Far East has exercised a strong imaginative pull on Russian composers, and Mily Balakirev’s famous piano showpiece breathes that same exotic atmosphere. Balakirev wrote this brief but fiery composition, which he subtitled “Oriental Fantasy,” during the late summer of 1869, when he was 32. Islamey has become famous not just for its exotic color and excitement but also because it is so difficult for the performer. The music sends the pianist flying across the complete range of the keyboard, employs gigantic chordal melodies that require huge hands, and goes at a dizzying speed. In fact, when Ravel set out to write his own stupefyingly difficult Gaspard de la nuit in 1908, he said that his intention was to write a piece that would be more difficult than Islamey. Islamey may have become famous as a virtuoso piano piece, but Balakirev himself regarded it as a preliminary sketch for a symphonic work. Its thunderous passagework and bright colors make it an ideal candidate for orchestration, and it was in fact orchestrated by the Italian composer Alfredo Casella in 1907.

Islamey begins with a great rush of notes (the meter is 12/16), and this opening idea is treated almost obsessively, repeating constantly and growing more complex as it does. The middle section, marked Andantino espressivo and set in a gently-rocking 6/8, builds to a climax full of runs and massive chords. The opening material returns, and Balakirev propels Islamey to its close with a brilliant coda marked Presto furioso.

Balakirev was by all accounts a first-rate pianist, but even its creator found Islamey too difficult to perform. The première was given by the dedicatee, Nikolay Rubinstein (brother of Anton), on December 12, 1869. Over thirty years later, Balakirev came back to this music and revised it; this version, completed in 1902, is the one usually heard today.

Program notes by Eric Bromberger

Moz-Art for Two Violins, after Mozart K. 416d Alfred SCHNITTKE Born November 24, 1934, Engels, Russia
Died August 3, 1998, Hamburg

For carnival season of 1783, Mozart, his wife, and members of her family put on a pantomime based on commedia dell’arte figures. Mozart himself took the part of Harlequin (he wrote to his father in Salzburg, asking him to send his Harlequin costume for the occasion), his brother-in-law Joseph Lange was Pierrot, and his sister-in-law Aloysia was Columbine. Mozart wrote music consisting of about fifteen movements for this pantomime, which was presented at the Hofburg in Vienna on March 3, 1783. And then the music vanished. Only parts for five of those movements survive, and Mozart’s biographer Alfred Einstein has felt that situation keenly, saying “It is an eternal loss to art that this masterpiece of the commedia dell’arte survives only in sketches and fragments.”

But some of this music lives on in an unexpected form. In 1978, almost two centuries after that pantomime was performed, Russian composer Alfred Schnittke took Mozart’s fragmentary first violin part and from it fashioned what he called a “game,” using it as the basis for a free fantasy of his own music (the title Moz-Art is part of the joke). Schnittke’s music exists in two versions: the first is for an elaborate ensemble of two violins, two small string orchestras, a double bass, and conductor, while the second–the one performed on this program–is a simplified version for two violins.

Schnittke takes bits of Mozart’s first violin part and treats them to a fantastic extension, a sort of weird metamorphosis of Mozart’s original music. The music starts off in close canon, and soon Schnittke has the players whistling phrases, playing in artificial harmonics, using left-handed pizzicato, playing in different keys, and so on. In the course of this music, the second violin must be re-tuned downward (some of its part is actually written in viola clef). Two worlds collide here. At moments we are in Mozart’s world, surrounded by clarity and order, while at others we plunge into Schnittke’s, where strange things (some of them very funny) happen to the order of two centuries earlier. Moz-Art winds its way to a strange conclusion: the first violin holds a sustained D, while two octaves below the re-tuned second violin ends on a D-flat, and on their quiet dissonance the music fades into silence.

Piano Quartet in G Minor, K. 478 Wolfgang Amadeus MOZART Born January 27, 1756, Salzburg
Died December 5, 1791, Vienna

Did Mozart invent the piano quartet? He is generally credited with creating the form, but in fact he did not. Other composers–including the fourteen-year-old Beethoven–had previously written quartets for piano and strings, but it was Mozart who first grappled with the central problem of this difficult form–the opposition of such different resources as piano and string trio–and not only solved it but wrote great music in the process. In his piano trios, Mozart sometimes wrote what are essentially piano sonatas with string accompaniment (the piano has the musical interest, while the strings play distinctly subordinate roles), but in the piano quartets he went straight to the difficulties–and the possibilities–of the new form and resolved them by liberating the string voices and making them genuine partners in the musical enterprise. Mozart completed the Piano Quartet in G Minor in Vienna on October 16, 1785, during a particularly rich period for the composer: he was just beginning work on The Marriage of Figaro, and the same year saw the completion of three magnificent piano concertos: Nos. 20-22.

Hearing the beginning of this piano quartet without knowing its composer, one might guess not Mozart, but Beethoven. Mozart seems to have reserved the key of G minor for his most intense music (the Symphonies No. 25 and 40 and the Viola Quintet, K.516, for example), and at the first instant of the Allegro all four instruments spit out the brusque opening theme, a six-note phrase very much like the powerful mottos Beethoven would later use as thematic material. A lyrical second subject is introduced by the piano, and the extended development treats both themes fully. The fierce, Beethoven-like motto recurs throughout, with the concluding cadence growing directly out of it.

Piano alone sings the poised beginning of the Andante, with strings entering after the statement of the first theme group. Now the melody moves easily between instrumental groups, as piano and strings trade phrases and share the development. The concluding Allegro moderato, which moves to G major rather than back to the opening key of G minor,is a rondo. Once again the piano launches the movement and is quickly joined by the strings. The genial atmosphere of the finale, however, is broken by a lengthy interlude that returns to the stormy manner of the opening movement. At the close, the sunny spirits of the rondo’s opening prevail, and the quartet concludes exuberantly.

Divertimento in E-Flat Major, K. 563 Wolfgang Amadeus MOZART

This extraordinary music comes from one of the most difficult periods of Mozart’s life, the summer of 1788. That June, beset by financial troubles, the Mozart family moved to less expensive lodgings in the suburbs of Vienna, only to suffer real calamity, the death of their infant daughter Theresia; Mozart’s pathetic letters begging for money from his friend and fellow mason Michael Puchberg suggest the extremity of his state. But external troubles did not mean creative drought: working at white heat through the summer months, Mozart wrote the great final trilogy of symphonies and then completed the Divertimento in E-flat Major in September. He dedicated this last work to Puchberg, who had helped the composer with loans.

The title “divertimento” is misleading. The title page actually reads String Trio in E-Flat Major, with Mozart’s further description Divertimento in Six Pieces.The music is in standard sonata-allegro form with two additional movements: a set of variations and an extra minuet. As its title suggests, a divertimento was conceived as diversion music, light in character and perhaps intended for outdoor performance. In that sense, this music is hardly a divertimento. Instead, it is true chamber music–intimate, expressive, and dependent on the full interplay of voices central to chamber music. Listeners should be warned: masquerading under the innocent title “divertimento” lies one of Mozart’s greatest chamber works.

Some of this music’s nobility comes from its generous proportions: when all repeats are taken, the first two movements stretch out to nearly a quarter-hour each. Beyond this, the mood is at times quite serious. It is dangerous to look for autobiographical significance in music, particularly from so difficult a time in a composer’s life, but many have noted the serious and somber character of this work and an almost bittersweet quality that colors its most expressive moments. The Allegro opens gravely and quietly (Mozart marks the beginning sotto voce), and this long movement unfolds gracefully. The extended development is full of harmonic tension, with chromatic lines moving quietly beneath the polished surface. The Adagio partakes of the same mood, though a florid violin part soaring above the other two voices brings some relief; Mozart sometimes thickens the texture by doublestopping both violin and viola.

By contrast, the first minuet is vigorous and extroverted, and Mozart follows this with the first “extra” movement, a set of variations. Critics invariably call the theme here “folklike,” and its slightly-square four-bar phrases do seem to suggest a popular origin. But Mozart’s treatment of this simple tune is very sophisticated, and the next-to-last variation–in the unusual key of B-flat minor–is stunning. The energetic second minuet features not one but two trio sections, both of them jaunty; an equally jaunty coda rounds off the movement. Mozart brings the divertimento to a close with a rondo based on a rocking main theme in 6/8 meter. There are vigorous episodes along the way, but the lyric mood of the main theme dominates the movement and finally rushes this remarkable music to its powerful close.

Program notes by Eric Bromberger

Piano Trio in B-flat Major, K. 502 Wolfgang Amadeus MOZART Born January 27, 1756, Salzburg
Died December 5, 1791, Vienna

The year 1786 marked the high point of Mozart’s efforts to establish himself in Vienna. From March of that year came two of his greatest piano concertos–No. 23 in A Major, K.488 and No. 24 in C Minor, K.491–and he then quickly completed The Marriage of Figaro, first produced in Vienna on May 1, 1786. He next turned to chamber music, creating a steady flow of works through the summer and fall. He brought this creative rush to a close with the Piano Trio in B-flat Major, K.502 on November 18, followed by the Piano Concerto in C, K.503 on December 4 and the Symphony No. 38 in D, K.504 two days later. The symphony would earn the nickname “Prague” when Mozart took it with him to that city in January 1787 for the first production of Figaro there. The triumph of the opera in Prague brought Mozart one of his final moments of unalloyed success–the record of the final five years of his life was one of decreasing popularity in Vienna and increasing poverty, domestic pain (the death of his father and several of his children), and his own illness.

But the fall of 1786 found Mozart at the height of his powers, and during this period he was experimenting with his use of thematic material. Some scholars believe Mozart made the themes of the Piano Concerto in C deliberately bland, with the aim of emphasizing their contrapuntal development, and in the first movement of the “Prague” Symphony Mozart derives much of his material from only one theme.

The first movement of the Piano Trio in B-flat Major shows a similar kind of thematic experimentation. The piano plays the opening theme immediately, but then–at the point where he should introduce a second theme–Mozart instead uses a variant of the opening idea. The beginning of the development brings a new theme in the violin, but the piano’s amiable opening melody dominates the movement. The other thing that dominates the movement is the sound of violin and piano, for the cello is relegated to a largely supporting role here.

Solo piano opens the Larghetto, laying out the gentle theme that will serve as the basis of the entire movement; this simple melody grows more ornate with each repetition. Once again, solo piano introduces the main idea of the concluding Allegretto. At last the cello is given a part with a higher profile as this movement races to its high-spirited close, much of the energy coming from the flying triplets of its final pages.

Quintet for Violin, Viola, Cello, Contrabass and Piano (2011) Ellen Taaffe ZWILICH Born 1939

A NOTE FROM THE COMPOSER

The creation of the Quintet for the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio, Michael Tree, viola and Harold Robinson, double bass was made possible with the support of The La Jolla Music Society (world première), Chamber Music Society of Detroit (made possible by a gift from Cecilia Benner); Carnegie Hall Corporation; Emilio Gravagno; Linton Chamber Music Series (made possible with a gift from Ann and Harry Santen); The John F. Kennedy Center Abe Fortas Memorial Fund; Arizona Friends of Chamber Music (made possible with a gift from Jean-Paul Bierny and Chris Tanz); Philharmonic Society of Orange County; Seven Days Seven Nights Festival; Regional Arts at the Raymond F. Kravis Center for the Performing Arts; and Hudson Valley Chamber Music Circle; through the International Arts Foundation, Inc.

My Quintet (for the same instrumentation as the great “Trout” Quintet by Franz Schubert) is in three movements, the second of which has the title “Die Launische Forelle” (roughly translated: “The Moody Trout”). I couldn’t resist using a very small quote from the Schubert song on which this Quintet is based. I also took the liberty of allowing that movement to spin out musical images of a “moody” trout. In all three movements the weight and character of the contrabass is an important element in the overall design. I’m especially interested in the possibilities offered by the contemporary contrabass player’s virtuosity and artistry which allows the composer to reach for that chamber music ideal of equal partners.

Because of my great admiration and affection for these artists, my work is dedicated to Jossi, Jaime, Sharon, Michael and Hal.

- Ellen Taaffe Zwilich

Quintet in A Major for Piano and Strings, D. 667 “Trout” Franz SCHUBERT Born January 31, 1797, Vienna
Died November 19, 1828, Vienna

Two events in the year 1817 led to the creation of the “Trout” Quintet. The first of these was Schubert’s meeting the famous baritone Michael Vogl, twenty-nine years his senior. Vogl, one of the leading singers of the Vienna Court Opera, recognized the young composer’s genius and became his champion, introducing many of his works, including–ten years later–Die Winterreise. The second event came in August, when Schubert wrote a brief song–Die Forelle (“The Trout”)–that quickly became very popular.

Two years later, in the summer of 1819, Vogl invited Schubert, then 22, to accompany him on a walking trip through Upper Austria to see the country where Vogl had been born. Schubert happily agreed, and the two spent the summer in the town of Steyr, about 90 miles west of Vienna. Schubert was enchanted with the town and countryside, with its mountains, streams, and meadows; to one of his friends in Vienna he wrote to say that the countryside was “unbelievably beautiful.” He was enthusiastically received by the local townspeople, and one of them–a wealthy merchant and amateur cellist named Sylvester Paumgartner–asked Schubert for a piece of music that he and his friends might play. He made two stipulations: that Schubert write for the players on hand and that the piece be based on Schubert’s song Die Forelle, of which Paumgartner was very fond.

And so in a lovely setting in the summer of 1819, Schubert wrote what has become one of the best-loved of all chamber works: the “Trout” Quintet. It is a quintet for piano and strings, but because he was writing for the available musicians Schubert dropped the second violin and added a string bass. The bass part is not particularly demanding, but the cello part is full of wonderful writing, some of it apparently too difficult for Paumgartner, who struggled with his part at the quintet’s first performance that summer.

The “Trout” Quintet is one of those rare pieces of completely “happy” music–one feels that Schubert’s joy in the Austrian countryside has made its way into every measure of this music. It also gives the impression of having been written at great speed. Not because of anything glib or superficial in the music, but because it feels spontaneous, as if this music poured easily from Schubert’s pen. The Allegro vivace opens with a fanfare-like arpeggio from the piano that recurs throughout the sonata-form movement. The violin has the first theme, while the piano introduces the gently-dotted second subject of a movement characterized by some unusual harmonic modulations. The Andante is built on three distinct theme groups, the first and third belonging to the piano. The second theme–played by viola and cello duet–is one of those gorgeous Schubert melodies that seem an endless flow of haunting song. The Scherzo, in standard scherzo-and-trio form, rips along with much energy and high spirits, while the Andantino is a set of five variations on Die Forelle, which has given the quintet its nickname. Strings alone play the melody of the song, the piano entering at the first variation. The variations are straightforward, and Schubert closes the movement with a brief Allegretto section, which is really a sixth variation. The good-spirited Allegro giusto races along happily on two principal themes, both of them played initially by the strings. There is no true development in this movement–only a fairly literal recapitulation–and one of the sunniest works in the repertory sails happily to its close.

Program notes by Eric Bromberger

Sonata in C Major for Two Violins, Opus 56 Serge PROKOFIEV Born April 23, 1891, Sontsovka, Ukraine
Died March 5, 1953, Moscow

Like many Russian composers, Prokofiev made his home in the West in the years following the Russian Revolution of 1917, and he spent the 1920s in Paris, which at that time–with Stravinsky, Ravel, Gershwin, Les Six, and many other composers–was the musical capital of the world. In Paris, Prokofiev composed a number of colorful and sometimes outrageous works, including the opera The Fiery Angel and the “Bolshevik ballet” Le Pas d’Acier. By the early 1930s, however, the homesick composer had begun a series of visits to Russia that would culminate in his return in 1933.

In 1932, the year before his return, Prokofiev joined a group of composers dedicated to the performance of contemporary chamber music. This group–which included Honegger, Milhaud, and Poulenc–took the name “Triton,” and their first performance was presented in Paris on December 16, 1932. It was for this concert that Prokofiev composed his Sonata for Two Violins, and he found himself with a pleasant problem for a composer–simultaneous premières: on that same night, in a hall across the street, the first performance of his ballet On the Dnieper was scheduled. Prokofiev described his solution: “Fortunately the ballet came on half an hour later, and so immediately after the sonata we dashed over to the Grand Opera–musicians, critics, author all together.”

On his return to Russia, Prokofiev would relax his style in response to the demands of Socialist Realism for art accessible to the masses, but this lyric vein had begun to appear in his music even before the move, and the Sonata for Two Violins combines a bittersweet lyricism with the more acerbic manner of his Parisian works. Sonatas for two solo violins are rare, and in them a composer must solve the problem of writing for two linear instruments without the harmonic resources of the piano. Though each movement of Prokofiev’s sonata remains firmly centered in a specific key, there are enough “wrong” notes here to stretch the concept of tonality considerably.

This sonata is in the slow-fast-slow-fast sequence of movements of the baroque violin sonata, but that may be its only relation to baroque music. The very brief (36-measure) Andante cantabile is built on the first violin’s opening melody. Much of the writing in this movement is very high, and the opening theme returns in the second violin just before the quiet close. By sharp contrast, the Allegro opens with huge, gritty chords from both violins and never slows down. The music features rapid exchanges between the two instruments (in the score Prokofiev stresses: con precisione) and such violinistic razzle-dazzle as left-handed pizzicatos.

Prokofiev gives the players the option of performing the third movement with or without mutes. He marks the music “tender and simple,” and much of the writing in this lyric music is chordal, depending on multiple-stopping from both players. The finale opens with a light-hearted theme marked energico that returns throughout the movement, much like a rondo tune. This is the longest of the four movements, with several secondary themes, and at the very end–over swirling accompaniment from the second violin–the first violin sings the opening melody from the first movement. A blistering Più presto coda brings the sonata to its exciting close.

Partita No. 2 in D Minor for Unaccompanied Violin, BWV 1004 Johann Sebastian BACH Born March 21, 1685, Eisenach, Germany
Died July 28, 1750, Leipzig

Bach’s six sonatas and partitas for unaccompanied violin date from about 1720, when Bach was Kapellmeister at the court of Anhalt-Cöthen. The three sonatas are in sonata da chiesa form, employing a slow-fast-slow-fast sequence of movements, but the structure of the three partitas is more complex. The term partita–which suggests a collection of parts–refers to a suite of dances, and Bach wrote his three partitas for unaccompanied violin as sets of dance movements. While each of the sonatas has four movements, of which the second is always a fugue, the partitas have more movements (five to seven) and are somewhat freer in form, as Bach adapted a number of old dance forms to the capabilities of the solo violin.

The Partita No. 2 in D Minor has become the most famous of Bach’s six works for unaccompanied violin, for it concludes with the Chaconne, one of the pinnacles of the violin literature. Before this overpowering conclusion, Bach offers the four basic movements of partita form, all in binary form. The opening Allemande is marked by a steady flow of sixteenth-notes occasionally broken by dotted rhythms, triplets, and the sudden inclusion of thirty-second notes. The Courante alternates a steady flow of triplets within dotted duple meters. The Sarabande proceeds along double and triple stops and a florid embellishment of the melodic line, while the Gigue races along cascades of sixteenth-notes in 12/8 time; the theme of the second part is a variation of the opening section.

While the first four movements present the expected partita sequence, Bach then springs a surprise by closing with a chaconne longer that the first four movements combined. The Chaconne offers some of the most intense music Bach ever wrote, and it has worked its spell on musicians everywhere for the last two and a half centuries: beyond the countless recordings for violin, it is currently available in performances by guitar, cello, lute, and viola, as well as in piano transcriptions by Brahms, Busoni, and Raff.

A chaconne is one of the most disciplined forms in music: it is built on a ground bass in triple meter over which a melodic line is repeated and varied. A chaconne demands great skill from a performer under any circumstances, but it becomes unbelievably complex on the unaccompanied violin, which must simultaneously suggest the ground bass and project the melodic variations above it. Even with the flatter bridge and more flexible bow of Bach’s day, some of this music borders on the unplayable, and it is more difficult still on the modern violin, with its more rounded bridge and concave bow.

This makes Bach’s Chaconne sound like supremely cerebral music–and it is–but the wonder is that this music manages to be so expressive at the same time. The four-bar ground bass repeats 64 times during the quarter-hour span of the Chaconne, and over it Bach spins out gloriously varied music, all the while keeping these variations firmly anchored on the ground bass. At the center section, Bach moves into D major, and here the music relaxes a little, content to sing happily for awhile; after the calm nobility of this interlude, the quiet return to D minor sounds almost disconsolate. Bach drives the Chaconne to a great climax and a restatement of the ground melody at the close.

Quintet in B Minor for Clarinet and Strings, Opus 115 Johannes BRAHMS Born May 7, 1833, Hamburg
Died April 3, 1897, Vienna

Brahms intended that his Viola Quintet in G Major of 1890 should be his last work. At age 57, he felt that he was done composing. In December of that year he sent his publisher some corrections to that quintet with a brief message: “With this note you can take leave of my music, because it is high time to stop.” But it was not to be. A few weeks later, at Christmas, he went to Meiningen to hear the clarinetist Richard Mühlfeld, and the course of music was changed. Brahms was so captivated by Mühlfeld’s playing and by the possibilities of the clarinet that he broke his own retirement and wrote four works that have become the heart of the clarinet literature.

Mühlfeld (1856-1907) was an interesting musician. He joined the Meiningen Orchestra as a violinist but taught himself to play clarinet and became the orchestra’s principal clarinetist

at age 23, later serving as principal of the Bayreuth orchestra. So impressed was Brahms by his playing that he nicknamed Mühlfeld “Fräulein Klarinette” and sat for hours listening to him practice. In the summer of 1891, six months after announcing his retirement, Brahms retreated to his favorite summer spot–Bad Ischl, high in the Alpine lake district–and wrote the Clarinet Trio, Opus 114 and the Quintet, Opus 115; two sonatas for clarinet followed in the summer of 1894. These four pieces, all written for Mühlfeld, were Brahms’ final instrumental works.

The Clarinet Quintet–first performed in Berlin on December 12, 1891, by Mühlfeld and Joachim’s quartet–has been universally acclaimed one of Brahms’ late masterpieces. Rather than writing a display piece to spotlight Mühlfeld’s playing, Brahms carefully integrates the clarinet into the texture of the music. This is extremely concentrated music, with materials extended and combined in ingenious ways. The Allegro opens with a violin duet that hovers uncertainly between D major and B minor–this tonal ambiguity will mark the entire quintet. Brahms introduces all his thematic material in the first moments of this movement: the undulating theme of the first two bars gives way to the slightly swung shape of the third and fourth bars, followed by the clarinet’s rising entry in the fifth. These three theme-shapes will appear in some form throughout the entire movement. At the stormy climax, the theme of the first two bars is heard over fierce swirls in the clarinet, and the movement dies away to conclude with the quiet of the beginning.

The Adagio is in ABA form, beginning with a simple clarinet theme over rhythmically-complex accompaniment in the strings. The unusual middle section brings a sound that is, by Brahmsian standards, exotic. Brahms was very fond of Hungarian gypsy music, and this section, marked più lento, shows that influence: the clarinet leaps and swirls while the accompanying strings whir beneath it (perhaps in imitation of the Hungarian cimbalom) before the opening material returns.

The principal themes of the final two movements are closely related, giving the Quintet an even greater feeling of unity. The Andantino opens with a smooth little tune for clarinet, but at the center section–Presto non assai, con sentimento–the music rushes ahead and never returns fully to the opening material. The finale, marked only Con moto, is a set of five variations on the opening theme, first stated by the violins and clarinet. Of particular interest is the very end, where the final variation gives way to the theme that opened the first movement, and Brahms’ Clarinet Quintet winds its very concentrated way to the quiet unison B that concludes this moving music.