10 minute read
ARIS QUARTETT
PRELUDE 2 PM
Musical Prelude by students from the Colburn School
Support for this program generously provided by:
Gordon Brodfuehrer Jeanette Stevens
ARIS QUARTETT
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2023 · 3 PM
THE BAKER-BAUM CONCERT HALL
MOZART String Quartet in C Major, K.465 “Dissonant” (1756–1791) Adagio; Allegro Andante cantabile Menuetto: Allegro Allegro non troppo
MENDELSSOHN String Quartet in F Minor, Opus 80 (1809–1847) Allegro vivace assai Allegro assai Adagio Finale: Allegro molto
INTERMISSION
GRIEG String Quartet in G Minor, Opus 27 (1843–1907) Un poco andante; Allegro molto ed agitato Romanze: Andantino; Allegro agitato Intermezzo: Allegro molto marcato Finale: Lento; Presto al Saltarello Aris Quartett Anna Katharina Wildermuth, Noémi Zipperling, violins; Caspar Vinzens, viola; Lukas Sieber, cello
La Jolla Music Society’s 2022–23 season is supported by The Conrad Prebys Foundation, The City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture, Banc of California, The Lodge at Torrey Pines, ProtoStar Foundation, Vail Memorial Fund, ResMed Foundation, Bright Events Rentals, Ace Parking, Brenda Baker and Steve Baum, Raffaella and John Belanich, Gordon Brodfuehrer, Mary Ellen Clark, Teresa and Harry Hixson, Joan and Irwin Jacobs, Dorothea Laub, Jeanette Stevens, Debra Turner, and Bebe and Marvin Zigman.
Born January 27, 1756, Salzburg Died December 5, 1791, Vienna Composed: 1785 Approximate Duration: 30 minutes
When Mozart moved to Vienna in 1781, the towering figure in music was Franz Joseph Haydn, then nearly 50. One of the first works Mozart encountered in Vienna was the set of six string quartets Haydn had just composed as his Opus 33. Mozart was impressed. Haydn had taken the string quartet, which for the previous generation had been a divertimentolike entertainment, and transformed it. He liberated the viola and cello from what had been purely accompanying roles and made all four voices equal partners; he further made each detail of rhythm and theme and harmony an important part of the musical enterprise. Under Haydn’s inspired hands, the string quartet evolved from entertainment music into an important art form. Mozart, who was 25 when he arrived in Vienna, quickly grasped what the older master had achieved with the string quartet and embarked on a group of six quartets of his own. We normally think of Mozart as a fast worker, but he worked for three years on these quartets, revising and refining until he had them just the way he wanted. When the six quartets were published in 1785, Mozart dedicated them to Haydn—we know them as Mozart’s “Haydn Quartets”—and conceded that they were indeed “the fruit of long and laborious toil.” The Quartet in C Major, the last of the six and nicknamed the “Dissonant” Quartet, was completed on January 14, 1785. The nickname comes from its extraordinary slow introduction, a span of 22 bewildering measures that left early audiences confused and threatened. The quartet is nominally in C major, and the music opens with a steady pulse of Cs from the cello, but as the other three voices make terraced entrances above, their notes (A-flat, E-flat, andA— all wrong for the key of C major) grind quietly against each other, unmooring us from any sense of tonal stability and leaving us unsettled, uncertain of the music’s character or direction. But order is restored at the Allegro, where the music settles into radiant C major and normal sonata form. This movement is quite straightforward, flowing broadly along its bright C-major energy; the development concentrates on the first subject, Mozart offers repeats of both exposition and development, and an ebullient coda draws the movement to a quiet close. Mozart specifies that the second movement should be Andante cantabile, and it does sing, though that lyric main idea evolves and grows more conflicted as the movement proceeds. Those tensions subside, and the movement almost whispers its way to the pianissimo close. The Menuetto powers its way along a rock-ribbed strength, but Mozart surprises us when the trio moves unexpectedly into urgent C minor.After these stresses, the concluding Allegro returns to the bright spirits of the opening movement. The form here is one of those magical amalgamations in which Mozart was able to fuse rondo and sonata form. There is something both serious and lighthearted about this movement, and its firm conclusion—in resounding C major— reminds us how far we have traveled from the harmonic uncertainty of the very beginning of the first movement. Mozart may have been deeply impressed by Haydn’s quartets, but now it was Haydn’s turn to be amazed. When he heard the “Dissonant” Quartet and two others of this cycle performed at a garden party in Vienna in February 1785, Haydn pulled Mozart’s father, Leopold, aside and offered as sincere a compliment as any composer ever gave another: “Before God and as an honest man I tell you that your son is the greatest composer known to me either in person or by name. He has taste and, what is more, the most profound knowledge of composition.”
Born February 3, 1809, Hamburg Died November 4, 1847, Leipzig Composed: 1847 Approximate Duration: 25 minutes
Mendelssohn’s life was short, and its ending was particularly painful.Always a driven man, he was showing signs of exhaustion during the 1846–7 season, which included trips to London and conducting engagements on the continent. In May 1847 came the catastrophe: his sister Fanny, only 41, suffered a stroke and died within hours. She and her younger brother had always been exceptionally close—Mendelssohn collapsed upon learning of her death, and he never recovered. Worried family members took him on vacation to Switzerland, where they hoped he could regain his strength and composure. At Interlaken, Mendelssohn painted, composed the String Quartet in F Minor, and tried to escape his sorrow, but with little success.An English visitor described his last view of the composer that summer: “I thought even then, as I followed his figure, looking none the younger for the loose dark coat and the wide-brimmed straw hat bound with black crepe, which he wore, that he was too much depressed and worn, and walked too heavily.” Back in Leipzig, Mendelssohn cancelled his engagements, suffered severe headaches, and was confined to bed.After several days in which he slipped in and out of consciousness, the composer died on the evening of November 4. He was 38 years old. Given the circumstances of its creation, one might expect Mendelssohn’s Quartet in F Minor to be somber music, and
ARIS QUARTETT - PROGRAM NOTES in fact it is. It is the last of Mendelssohn’s quartets (and his last major completed work), but it has never achieved the popularity of his earlier quartets—the pianist Ignaz Moscheles found it the product of “an agitated state of mind.” Yet this quartet’s driven quality is also the source of its distinction and strength. One feels this from the first instant of the Allegro vivace assai (it is worth noting that three of the four movements are extremely fast): the double-stroked writing, even at a very quiet dynamic, pushes the music forward nervously, and out of this ominous rustle leaps the dotted figure that will be a part of so much of this movement.Amore flowing second subject nevertheless maintains the same dark cast, and after a long development this movement drives to its close on a Presto coda. The second movement, marked Allegro assai, is inABA form: the driving outer sections keep the dotted rhythm of the opening movement, while the trio rocks along more gently. The Adagio, the only movement not in a minor key, is built on the first violin’s lyric opening idea. The music rises to a somewhat frantic climax full of dotted rhythms before subsiding to close peacefully. The finale, marked Allegro molto, pushes ahead on the vigor of its syncopated rhythms, which are set off by quick exchanges between groups of instruments.As in the first movement, there is more relaxed secondary material, but the principal impression here is of nervous energy, and at the close the music hurtles along triplet rhythms to an almost superheated close in which the F-minor tonality is affirmed with vengeance. It is not a conclusion that brings much relief, and it speaks directly from the agonized consciousness of its creator.
String Quartet in G Minor, Opus 27 EDVARD GRIEG
Born June 15, 1843, Bergen, Norway Died September 4, 1907, Bergen Composed: 1877 Approximate Duration: 35 minutes
We automatically think of Grieg as a Norwegian nationalist composer—as the composer of music for Sigurd Jorsalfar and Peer Gynt, Norwegian dances for piano, and a number of ravishing songs in Norwegian—and so it comes as a surprise to discover an entirely different side of this composer: He was at some deep level dissatisfied with writing purely “nationalistic” music and was drawn to the discipline of the classical forms. In 1877, when he was 34, Grieg turned to the most demanding of classical forms and wrote to a friend: “I have recently finished a string quartet which I still haven’t heard. It is in G minor and is not intended to bring trivialities to market. It strives towards breadth, soaring flight and above all resonance for the instruments for which it was written. I needed to do this as a study… I think in this way I shall find myself again. You can have no idea what trouble I
had with the forms, but this was because I was stagnating…” The intensity of Grieg’s language suggests how difficult writing this quartet was for him—and also how important it was. Grieg made the task even more complex by unifying much of the quartet around one simple theme-shape, which is then varied and extended in countless ways across the span of the quartet. He took this theme from his own song “Spillemaend” (“Minstrels”), composed two years earlier, in 1875. This shape is stamped out by the four instruments in octaves to open the quartet’s slow introduction, and listeners may take pleasure in following Grieg’s transformations of this theme: It reappears quietly as the second subject of the first movement, is shouted out furiously as part of the Intermezzo’s central episode, opens the finale’s slow introduction, and is threaded ingeniously into textures throughout. One of the other impressive things about this quartet is its sound: Grieg was not kidding when he said that this music strives to achieve “above all resonance for the instruments for which it is written.” The massed sound of the opening, with the instruments in octaves, establishes this sonority, and at moments the sound of this quartet can verge on the orchestral, with hammered chords and extensive double-stopping. Yet Grieg can relax, and the quartet also has some of those wonderful, effortless Grieg melodies. The structure may be briefly described: the portentous slow introduction leads to the nervous main subject, marked Allegro molto ed agitato (it is worth noting that two of the quartet’s movements are marked agitato, a third marcato). The second subject of this sonata-form movement is an attractive derivation of the fundamental theme-shape, and this movement makes its dramatic way over a very long span. Particularly impressive is the ending of this movement: Over ponticello accompaniment from the upper voices, the cello winds the movement down with a long melody marked cantabile e molto espressivo, and the music drives to a sudden close on a Prestissimo derived from the original theme-shape. Grieg marks the second movement Romanze, suggesting music of an expressive character, and then alternates two quite distinct kinds of music: the melting lyricism of the opening gives way to a hard-driving Allegro agitato; the music moves between these quite different poles before a relaxed ending. The Intermezzo, marked Allegro molto marcato, begins with the same massive sound that opened the quartet. This movement—in ternary form—has a quicksilvery quality, flowing quickly between different kinds of expression: con fuoco gives way almost instantly to tranquillo.After a slow introduction, the Finale turns into a racing dance movement—it is a saltarello, an old Italian dance that features leaping (the finale of Mendelssohn’s Italian Symphony is a saltarello). There is a subtle rhythmic sense here (2/4 will flow effortlessly into 6/8) as the music dances its way to a fullthroated climax and a ringing close in G major. 30 THE CONRAD | HOME OF LA JOLLA MUSIC SOCIETY · 2022-23 SEASON
