Zemlinsky Quartet Cycle - October 29. 2015

David Finckel and Wu Han, Artistic Directors

THE ZEMLINSKY QUARTET CYCLE Thursday Evening, October 29, 2015 at 7:30 Daniel and Joanna S. Rose Studio 3,485th Concert

ESCHER STRING QUARTET ADAM BARNETT-HART, violin AARON BOYD, violin PIERRE LAPOINTE, viola BROOK SPELTZ, cello

2015-2016 Season

The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center 70 Lincoln Center Plaza, 10th Floor New York, NY 10023 212-875-5788 www.ChamberMusicSociety.org

Thanks to Millbrook Vineyards & Winery, official wine sponsor of Rose Studio Concerts.

This evening’s event is being streamed live at www.ChamberMusicSociety.org/WatchLive Photographing, sound recording, or videotaping this performance is prohibited.

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THE ZEMLINSKY QUARTET CYCLE Thursday Evening, October 29, 2015 at 7:30 ESCHER STRING QUARTET ADAM BARNETT-HART, violin AARON BOYD, violin PIERRE LAPOINTE, viola BROOK SPELTZ, cello ALEXANDER Quartet No. 1 in A major for Strings, ZEMLINSKY Op. 4 (1896)

(1871-1942) Allegro con fuoco Allegretto Breit und kräftig Vivace e con fuoco

ZEMLINSKY Quartet No. 2 for Strings, Op. 15 (1913-15) Sehr mässig (quasi andante) Adagio Schnell Andante Langsam

—Intermission— ZEMLINSKY Quartet No. 3 for Strings, Op. 19 (1924) Allegretto: Gemächlich, innig bewegt Thema mit Variationen: Geheimnisvoll bewegt, nicht zu schnell—Variationen I-VII Romanze: Sehr mässige Achtel, Andante sostenuto Burleske: Sehr lebhaft, Allegro moderato

ZEMLINSKY Quartet No. 4 for Strings, Op. 25 (1936) Präludium: Poco adagio Burleske: Vivace Adagietto: Adagio Intermezzo: Allegretto Barcarole (Thema mit Variationen): Poco adagio Finale—Doppelfuge: Allegro molto energico

The Chamber Music Society expresses its deepest gratitude to Mrs. Robert Schuur for her extraordinary leadership support of String Quartet Cycles in the Rose.

notes on the

PROGRAM

At the turn of the 20th century, Romantic music grew larger in every aspect, but after the First World War, smaller systems such as Neo-Classical and TwelveTone pieces took its place. In my opinion, the Zemlinsky string quartet cycle is a perfect illustration of that evolution in Viennese classical music at that precise junction in history. Perhaps Zemlinsky was later forgotten because he reacted to these drastic musical changes with a delayed and skeptical response rather than embracing the new tendencies blindly. We will, of course, never know, but from our current perspective, it hardly matters. As Schoenberg reportedly said about Zemlinsky's reputation among composers “Zemlinsky can wait,” I would answer that he has waited long enough.

- Pierre Lapointe

Alexander Zemlinsky Alexander Zemlinsky’s music synthesized the dominant strains of musical life in his native Vienna at the beginning of the 20th century. The combination of his training at the Vienna Conservatory and the influence of Brahms provided the foundation for his early compositions. By the turn of the century, he had integrated the ripe chromaticism and expansive expression of Wagner and Strauss into his musical speech, and then went on to try out some of the avant-garde techniques of Schoenberg and his followers, but he remained more conservative than his colleague and never eschewed traditional tonality with the serialists’ diligence. Though his works were enthusiastically praised by Mahler and his Viennese colleagues, Zemlinsky had become largely a footnote in the history of Late Romantic music by the time of his death, his compositions almost unknown. He remained in eclipse until the late 1970s, when British radio stations and a few German opera houses sponsored revivals of his music. Many of his works, including several of the operas, have since become available in recordings and scattered performances, and Zemlinsky’s full stature is finally being recognized by the musical world.

“I’ve always firmly believed that he was a great composer, and I still do,” wrote Schoenberg about Zemlinsky in 1949. “I owe almost all of my knowledge of the technique of composing to him.” Zemlinsky and Schoenberg first met in 1895, when Zemlinsky took over the conductorship of an amateur orchestra called Polyhymnia, at whose rehearsals Schoenberg was trying to decipher the mysteries of music by teaching himself to play the cello. The two budding musicians, both born in Vienna (Schoenberg was three years younger), became friends, and Zemlinsky gave Schoenberg lessons in counterpoint for a few months and advised him on some early compositions; it was Schoenberg’s only formal musical instruction. Zemlinsky deemed himself qualified for this activity by virtue of his having studied composition with the brothers Robert and Johann Fuchs at the Vienna Conservatory, and having been awarded a prize for his Piano Trio, Op. 3 by a jury that

included none other than the redoubtable doyen of Viennese music, Johannes Brahms, who persuaded his publisher, Fritz Simrock, to issue the score of the work. The relationship between Zemlinsky and Schoenberg deepened when Schoenberg married Zemlinsky’s sister, Mathilde, in 1901, and the two co-founded the Vereinigung Schaffender Tonkünstler (Society for Creative Musicians) three years later to promote the performance of new music.

Zemlinsky tried to live as a composer for a few years, producing his Second Symphony, Quartet No. 1, several sets of songs, and the opera Sarema (premiered at the Munich Court Opera in 1897; Schoenberg made the piano arrangement), but by 1899, he had to take a job conducting at Vienna’s Karlstheater. He thereafter followed parallel careers as conductor and composer. His friend Gustav Mahler, appointed director of the Court Opera in 1897, premiered Zemlinsky’s second opera, Es war einmal… (Once Upon a Time …), with that company in 1900 and scheduled the first performance of Die Traumgörge (Görge the Dreamer) seven years later, but that production was scrapped when Mahler quit his post after a decade of cabals against him. From 1904 to 1911, Zemlinsky conducted at the Vienna Volksoper, whose traditional fare of operetta he expanded to include both standard repertory works and such novelties as his own Kleider machen Leute (Clothes Make the Man), Dukas’ Ariane et Barbe-Bleue (Ariadne and Blue Beard), and Strauss’ Salome, which he led in their Viennese premieres. He also nurtured the talent of the breathtaking prodigy Erich Wolfgang Korngold during that time, and orchestrated the 11-year-old’s ballet, Der Schneemann (The Snowman), which was staged at the Court Opera at the command of Emperor Franz Josef.

In 1911, Zemlinsky moved to Prague to become opera conductor at the Deutsches Landestheater, a post he held for the next 16 years while also teaching composition at the Deutsche Akademie für Musik in that city and establishing the Prague branch of the new music society he had set up in Vienna with Schoenberg. From 1927 to 1933, he worked in Berlin as an assistant conductor to Otto Klemperer at the path-breaking Kroll Opera and professor at the Musikhochschule; he also filled numerous guest conducting engagements in Europe and Russia during those years. When the Nazi takeover in 1933 forced him back to Austria, Zemlinsky hoped to devote himself to composition in order to add to the short list of works he had managed to complete during the two preceding busy decades: a pair of one-act operas, Eine florentinische Tragödie (A Florentine Tragedy) and Der Zwerg (The Dwarf), both after Oscar Wilde, and a third titled Der Kreidekreis (The Chalk Circle), on a play by Klabund; incidental music for a Mannheim production of Shakespeare’s Cymbeline; the Lyric Symphony; the second and third (of four) string quartets; and a few songs. However, the increasingly tense political situation in Austria—Zemlinsky had some Jewish ancestry—allowed him to complete only his final string quartet, write a few songs, and draft the opera Der König Kandaules (King Candaules, after André Gide), which was completed by Antony Beaumont many years later and premiered in Hamburg in 1996. By the time of the Nazi Anschluss, in 1938, Zemlinsky was ill and incapable of creative work.

He fled first to Prague and made his way to the United States when hostilities erupted the following year. His death, in Larchmont, New York on March 15, 1942, drew little notice.

Quartet No. 1 in A major for Strings, Op. 4 Alexander ZEMLINSKY Born October 14, 1871 in Vienna.

Died March 15, 1942 in Larchmont, New York.

Composed in 1896.

Premiered on December 2, 1896 in Vienna.

Tonight is the first CMS performance of this piece.

Duration: 32 minutes In 1893, as soon as he left the Conservatory, Zemlinsky joined the Wiener Tonkünstlerverein (Vienna Musicians’ Society), of which Johannes Brahms was honorary president.

Zemlinsky took part in the society’s concerts as pianist and composer, and a number of his early works were performed under its auspices, including his String Quartet No. 1 in A major of 1896, which was first heard on December 2nd of that year. The quartet, much under the sway of Brahms in its forms, scale, and idiom, opens with an expansive sonata-form movement of considerable harmonic and contrapuntal sophistication for the work of a 25-year-old composer. The main

theme is a lively construction whose syncopated rhythms lend it an excited, athletic quality. The subsidiary subject, first given in phrase-by-phrase dialogue between the violins, provides lyrical and expressive contrast. The development section, largely concerned with the syncopated main theme, builds to an intense climax before subsiding to make way for the recapitulation that rounds out the movement. The Allegretto adapts the three-part form of the traditional scherzo (A–B–A) into a piece of sharply contrasting moods and style: the outer sections are leisurely and melodic, the sort of music that Brahms would have labeled “Intermezzo”; the central episode is a true scherzo, propelled by supple accented notes and a frenzied abandon that evoke Central European Gypsy music. The third movement (marked “Broad and powerful”), also in sonata form, juxtaposes a dramatic, stabbing principal motive with arching secondary themes of melancholy cast. The sonataform finale is rich thematically and of sufficiently cheerful personality that some of its melodies suggest the infectious lilt of the Viennese waltz. 

Quartet No. 2 for Strings, Op. 15 Alexander ZEMLINSKY Composed in 1913-15.

Premiered on April 9, 1918 in Vienna by the Rosé Quartet.

First CMS performance on October 28, 2009.

Duration: 43 minutes

“Perhaps [the Second Quartet] will make a certain impression on you,” Zemlinsky wrote in July 1914 to the beautiful and musically gifted Alma Mahler, with whom he had had a passionate affair before she abruptly broke it off to marry Gustav Mahler in 1901, “particularly if you know which period of my life finds expression in it.” Zemlinsky referred in his letter to the wrenching tragedy six

years before, when Mathilde, his sister architecture but also to raise and lower and Arnold Schoenberg’s wife, left the curtain on an imaginary stage. The her husband for the couple’s painting discourse progresses jaggedly, even teacher, Richard Gerstl, the brilliant but violently. Moods of acquiescence or troubled artist who had rebelled against apathy erupt with little forewarning into the sensual Secessionism of Klimt to hysteria or exaltation, sink, collapse, espouse a psychologically probing and burst forth anew. Kaleidoscopic Expressionism. (In the String Quartet changes of instrumental groupings No. 2 that he composed during that depict constantly changing relationships time, Schoenberg quoted the old German between the participants: one voice folksong Ach, du lieber Augustin, Alles moves alone, in isolation; two voices ist hin!—“Everything is lost!”—and move rapidly and independently, without set a poem for soprano in the finale consideration for the others; individual that prays for relief from passion.) figures oppose and harangue, rejoice, Through the mediation of his student and and bewail.” colleague Anton Webern, Schoenberg pleaded with Mathilde to return for the Zemlinsky’s Quartet No. 2, his largest purely instrumental good of their daughter and conception, is a single span infant son. Later in 1908, “Its structural of music lasting over 40 she did. In November, the divisions serve minutes.

The individual distraught Gerstl, 25 and not only to outline “movements” do not full of promise, plunged a symphonic a knife into his chest and architecture but also follow conventional forms then hung himself in front to raise and lower but unfold in expressively complementary phases. of a mirror. the curtain on an Each of these main imaginary stage.” divisions is marked by the Antony Beaumont, in his recurrence of the motto biography of Zemlinsky, surmised that the String Quartet No. 2 that opens the work—a rising three“appears to have drawn inspiration from note figure: D–E–G—whose shape and episodes in the lives of those closest to rhythm also provide a motivic seed for him, reliving above all the horrors of much of the quartet’s thematic substance. the Gerstl affair, and using the quartet The opening section begins calmly, rises medium to orchestrate the interaction to a frenzied intensity, turns lyrical and of those involved.” Zemlinsky left almost prayerful, and closes with an no evidence of any overt program in unsettled episode in which skittish, widethe work, but its intense expression, ranging figures in the violins vie with intimately woven textures, symphonic soothing replies in the low strings. The scale, and extreme chromaticism seem next movement describes a formal arch, to indicate some personal element in this beginning as a meditation on the threemusic. “Its polyphony arises as much note motto—if there is any love music in from the interplay of human emotions as this quartet, it is here—and progressing from variative development,” continued to a wildly impassioned climax with a Beaumont. “Its structural divisions caustic undertone before trying to regain serve not only to outline a symphonic the serene mood of the opening. In the

following movement, announced by a snapping pizzicato in the cello, the music turns ironic and frantically busy, perhaps as a bitter commentary on (or desperate escape from) the amorous notions of the preceding section; the potential respite offered by a smooth passage is undermined by anxious, irregular pulses in the cello. Echoes of events from the quartet’s first section follow, a passage that Beaumont called “a reminiscing quotation of the past” and compared in its psychological nature to the processes of memory that Proust and Freud were exploring at about the same time that

Zemlinsky composed this work. The next strain begins with a sense of renewed energy ignited by a strongly rhythmic, scale-note theme, but encounters an expressive foil in a lyrical idea initiated by the cello for which the dotted rhythm that opened the energetic theme becomes an obsessive counterpoint. These elements contend in a forceful, closely reasoned development section that eventually saps the vehemence of both. Calm returns, as does the motto in its original form, and the quartet finally finds resolution in a peaceful, luminous coda. 

Quartet No. 3 for Strings, Op. 19 Alexander ZEMLINSKY Composed in 1924.

Premiered on October 27, 1924 in Leipzig by the Vienna String Quartet.

Tonight is the first CMS performance of this piece.

Duration: 24 minutes The Third Quartet, composed in just three weeks in August and September 1924, leaves behind the extroverted emotion, enriched harmonies, dense textures, and vast structure of the Second Quartet of a decade earlier, stylistic qualities he shared with Schoenberg, for a new idiom, one that is detached in expression, succinct in form, piquant in harmony, and clearly delineated in its instrumental threads.

Zemlinsky had been closely involved with the conference of the International Society of Contemporary Music held in Prague earlier that summer—he conducted the premieres of both his

own Lyric Symphony and Schoenberg’s Erwartung during the festival—and his exposure there to the music of younger colleagues who were developing a modern, unsentimental “Neo-Classical” idiom may well have influenced his own writing. Antony Beaumont, however, in his study of Zemlinsky, suggested another motivation as well: “New techniques and styles—the shifting meters of Stravinsky, the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) of Hindemith—these and much else are paraded in the work as if through a hall of mirrors, distorted, blurred, and gently derided."

A painful episode in Zemlinsky’s life occurred immediately before, and quite likely motivated, the Third Quartet. His sister, Mathilde, Schoenberg’s wife, had died from adrenal cancer in October 1923 after what had been a troubled marriage nearly destroyed 15 years before by her affair with the painter Richard Gerstl. On August 21, 1924 Schoenberg announced to Zemlinsky that he was defying

Vienna’s conventional 12 months of mourning following the death of a spouse to marry Gertrud Kolisch, the sister of violinist Rudolf Kolisch and 24 years Schoenberg’s junior. The news affected Zemlinsky profoundly, and the next day he began his Third Quartet, perhaps as a proxy for the work in Mathilde’s memory that Schoenberg had promised to write but never did. In addition to registering a new phase in Zemlinsky’s stylistic evolution, the Quartet No. 3 also seems to have mirrored his own complex personal feelings at the time of its creation.

Variationen based on a short, sardonic theme (marked “moving mysteriously”) of spasmodic intervals, fingernail-on-theblackboard glissandos, and fragmented phrases. As the variations pass by quickly and continuously, the theme is transformed variously into a scherzo, a phantom waltz, a soaring violin line, and finally into something akin to a lament before the movement “expires” (Zemlinsky’s word) with a tremolo echo of the opening.

The Romanze traces a formal and emotional arch, opening and closing with The reticent opening theme of the a wide-ranging, angular melody that the quartet’s sonata-form first movement is viola is instructed to play “singingly and uncommonly quietly” borrowed from a phrase in the Lyric Symphony “New techniques and styles... above gently pulsing, (with texts by Tagore) are paraded in the work as dissonant harmonies. set to the words, if through a hall of mirrors, The mood and dynamic level become more “Forget this night, distorted, blurred, and intense as the violin when the night is no gently derided.” takes over the viola’s more,” a lament for theme. A climax is lost love. (Beaumont thought that this refers to “Mathilde’s reached but its energy quickly dissipates, affair with the painter Richard and the movement ends “without Gerstl, for which Schoenberg never expression,” according to the score, with forgave her.”) Contrast comes with a return of the viola’s song, now sad the second theme, a nervous motive memory rather than fulfilled summation. in sharply dotted rhythms. The exposition closes with a gliding, triple-meter The closing Burleske alludes to the title strain, perhaps the curdled memory of the polyphonically complex Rondoof a waltz. The sharply rhythmic motive Burleske in Mahler’s Ninth Symphony dominates the development section (1910), which Mahler dedicated to “My until it is abruptly cut off by a silence, Friends in Apollo,” a sarcastic rebuttal which is followed by a transformation invoking the Greek god of music to of the gliding waltz strain into floating critics who contended that he could not block chords. The recapitulation returns write proper counterpoint. Zemlinsky’s just the main and gliding themes, movement, too, is contrapuntally ignoring the nervous second involved and a rondo in form, but subject until it pokes through in its dominant quality is the rhythmic the movement’s closing measures. dynamism in bracing mixed meters that drives relentlessly toward the work’s  The second movement is a Thema mit furious closing measures.

Quartet No. 4 for Strings, Op. 25 Alexander ZEMLINSKY Composed in 1936.

Premiered on April 21, 1967 in Vienna by the La Salle Quartet.

Tonight is the first CMS performance of this piece.

Duration: 26 minutes Among Zemlinsky’s closest friends in the musical world was the Viennese composer and fellow Schoenberg acolyte Alban Berg. Zemlinsky was stunned by Berg’s unexpected death from incurable blood poisoning on Christmas Eve 1935, and he cancelled an important conducting engagement at the Teatre Liceu in Barcelona in January to compose his String Quartet No. 4 as a musical memorial to his friend and colleague. The work was completed in April 1936 and given a private reading by the Kolisch Quartet, but then fell victim to the Nazis’ ban on Zemlinsky’s music and not performed publicly until the LaSalle Quartet brought it to light in April 1967.

As inspiration and model for his work, Zemlinsky took Berg’s Lyric Suite of 1925-26, which Berg had dedicated to him, whose orchestral version received its belated Viennese premiere just two weeks before its composer’s death.

Though it differs in its formal details and expressive essence, Zemlinsky’s quartet borrows the six-movement form and the loose, suite-like structure

of Berg’s work. (Zemlinsky added the subtitle “Suite” to his manuscript, but it was inexplicably omitted from the score published by Universal Edition in 1971.)

The Präludium is built from a stark, somber, quietly grieving chorale whose phrases are separated by interludes of subdued motion, “like mourners stepping forward around the open grave,” wrote the composer’s biographer Antony Beaumont. Gustav Mahler included a mocking Burleske in his Symphony No. 9 of 1910, one of music’s most poignant utterances of farewell, to signify leaving behind the tawdry attractions of the city and of sophisticated life. Zemlinsky conducted the work on several occasions, and he borrowed its title and something of its emotional message for the second movement of his Fourth Quartet, which is realized with a disturbing demonic fury.

Mahler, in his Fifth Symphony, may also have provided the seed for the Adagietto, though the mood of Zemlinsky’s piece is more anxious and questioning. The twopart Intermezzo (fast and faster), perhaps a reminiscence of past happiness, contains the brightest emotions of the quartet. The penultimate movement is a set of three free variations on a flowing, thoughtful theme (Zemlinsky called it a “barcarole”) first sung by the cello. The Finale is a tightly compressed double fugue based on a tense chromatic theme introduced at the outset and a leaping motive presented halfway through, both begun by the second violin. Both themes are worked to fever pitch in a scintillating coda. 

©2015 Dr. Richard E. Rodda

meet tonight’s

ARTISTS

The Escher String Quartet has received acclaim for its profound musical insight and rare tonal beauty. Championed by the Emerson String Quartet, the group was a BBC New Generation Artist from 2010-12, giving debuts at both Wigmore Hall and BBC Proms at Cadogan Hall. A former member of CMS Two, the ensemble performs regularly at The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and in 201213 presented a critically acclaimed three-concert series featuring the quartets of Benjamin Britten. In 2013, the quartet became one of the very few chamber ensembles to be awarded the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant and in 2015 it was the recipient of a Lincoln Center Martin E. Segal Award. The quartet has collaborated with artists including David Finckel, Leon Fleisher, Wu Han, Lynn Harrell, Cho-Liang Lin, David Shifrin, and Jason Vieaux. In the 2013-14 season, the Escher Quartet undertook an extensive UK tour with pianist Benjamin Grosvenor.

The Escher Quartet is increasingly making a distinctive impression throughout Europe as it builds important debuts into its schedule and receives consistently high acclaim for its work. These debut venues have included the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Auditorium du Louvre in Paris, and the Conservatoire de Musique in Geneva. In 2013, the group’s first appearance at Israel’s Tel Aviv Museum of Art resulted in an immediate re-invitation, and its performance at Wigmore Hall was followed by an invitation to establish a regular relationship with the venue. Last season saw further significant debuts at London’s Kings Place, Berlin’s Konzerthaus, and Slovenian Philharmonic Hall in Ljubljana, as well as the Risør Festival in Norway, O/Modernt Festival in Sweden, and Great Music in Irish Houses.

Alongside its growing European profile, the Escher Quartet continues to flourish in its home country, performing at Alice Tully Hall in New York, Kennedy Center in Washington DC, and the Ravinia and Caramoor festivals. The 2014-15 saw a critically acclaimed debut at Chamber Music San Francisco and an appearance at Music@Menlo in California. The quartet was also involved in the education of young musicians, with coaching activities at Campos do Jordão Music Festival in Brazil and the Royal Academy of Music in London.

The quartet has recorded the complete Zemlinsky string quartets on the Naxos label, releasing two highly-acclaimed volumes in 2013 and 2014 respectively. This year the ensemble released the first two in a series of three albums comprising the complete Mendelssohn quartets on the BIS label. The Escher Quartet takes its name from Dutch graphic artist M.C. Escher, and draws inspiration from Escher’s method of interplay between individual components working together to form a whole.

upcoming

EVENTS

SCHUMANN, STRAUSS, & BRAHMS

Friday, October 30, 7:30 PM • Alice Tully Hall Indulge in the lush sounds of the German romanitcs, with Schumann's deeply personal Fantasy Pieces, Strauss' early piano quartet, and Brahms' C major Piano Trio.

NEW MUSIC IN THE KAPLAN PENTHOUSE

Thursday, November 5, 7:30 PM • Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse Featuring the New York premiere of Paul Lansky's The Long and Short of It, CoCommissioned by CMS. This event will also be streamed live at www.ChamberMusicSociety.org/watchlive

CHANNEL CROSSING: MUSIC OF ENGLAND AND FRANCE

Tuesday, November 10, 7:30 PM • Alice Tully Hall Explore musical connections that cross the English Channel. The music of Purcell begins this journey of influence from the Baroque to the present day.