11 minute read
QUARTETTO DI CREMONA
PRELUDE 6:30 PM
Lecture by Michael Gerdes
QUARTETTO DI CREMONA
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2023 · 7:30 PM
THE BAKER-BAUM CONCERT HALL MOZART String Quartet No. 1 in G Major, K.80
(1756–1791) Adagio Allegro Menuetto Rondo
VERDI String Quartet in E Minor
(1813–1901) Allegro Andantino Prestissimo Scherzo-Fuga: Allegro assai mosso
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.
INTERMISSION
WOLF
(1860–1903) Italian Serenade
RESPIGHI String Quartet in D Major (1879–1936) Allegro moderato Tema con variazioni: Andante Intermezzo: Lento; Allegretto vivace Finale: Allegro vivace Quartetto di Cremona Cristiano Gualco, Paolo Andreoli, violins; Simone Gramaglia, viola; Giovanni Scaglione, cello
Quartetto di Cremona’s recordings are available on Audite, Ayriel Classical, Klanglogo, and Decca. North American representation: Kirshbaum Associates Inc. www.kirshbaumassociates.com
Born January 27, 1756, Salzburg Died December 5, 1791, Vienna Composed: 1770 Approximate Duration: 17 minutes
Mozart wrote his first symphony at age 8 and his first piano concerto at 11, but he took the string quartet seriously—he waited until he was an old man of 14 to write his first. This was on his first trip to Italy, in 1770. He and his father had made an extended visit to Milan, where the boy was commissioned to write an opera to be produced the following December. They left Milan on March 14, and the next day—either in the coach or at an inn in Lodi (accounts differ)—the boy wrote his first quartet. This first essay was in only three movements; the final movement, a rondo, was added late in 1773 or early in 1774 for a performance during to a visit to Vienna. It should be noted immediately that in 1770 the string quartet was not yet the sophisticated and expressive form it would become under the hands of Haydn and Mozart himself. By 1770, in fact, Haydn had written only ten of his 83 quartets, and these were in the divertimento form that makes clear the quartet’s root as entertainment music. Mozart’s first quartet is in this lighter mode, and many have felt that it betrays the influence of the galant music of Giambattista Sammartini, whom the Mozarts had just met in Milan. In any case, the quartet does show some surprising touches: It opens with a slow movement followed by a fast one, a reversal of the expected pattern. There are no dynamic markings in the first three movements, and the part-writing is a little strange (at times the second violin is playing above the first); whether these are the results of inexperience or of youthful experimentation is impossible to say. The quartet opens with an Adagio movement that is by turns gentle and energetic. Most of the musical interest here—and throughout the quartet—is in the violins, with the two lower voices playing largely accompanimental roles; here the two violins exchange phrases of an elaborate melodic line. The Allegro is quite vigorous—at several points the young composer has the violins playing quadruple-stopped chords—and some of the writing goes quite high. The minuet seems more normal, though in the trio section Mozart tries briefly to move away from the home key of G major. The concluding rondo, which has been described as a gavotte, was added when Mozart was almost 18.Audiences may take pleasure in listening for signs of Mozart’s growth in the four years that separate the finale from the first three movements: the part-writing for all four instruments is now much more assured, and there are sharp dynamic contrasts and key changes. Especially effective is the very ending, where—after a vigorous rush up the scale—the music comes to a sudden, surprising close.
String Quartet in E Minor GIUSEPPE VERDI
Born October 9/10, 1813, Roncole, Italy Died January 27, 1901, Milan Composed: 1872 Approximate Duration: 23 minutes
Verdi came out of retirement to compose Aida, which was triumphantly premièred in Cairo on Christmas Eve 1871. Once back in Italy, the composer supervised productions of his new opera in Milan and Parma and in the fall of 1872 went to Naples for the first production there. But Theresa Stolz, who was to sing the part ofAida in Naples, fell ill, and the production was delayed. Verdi found himself marooned in Naples, waiting for the recovery of his soprano and with nothing to do. In a letter written the following spring, he described what happened: “In my moments of idleness in Naples I actually wrote a quartet. I had it performed one evening in my house without attaching the slightest importance to it, and without issuing invitations of any kind. Present were only seven or eight people accustomed to visiting me. Whether the quartet is beautiful or ugly I don’t know…All I know is that it’s a quartet!” Despite Verdi’s self-deprecation, the quartet was an immediate success: those “seven or eight people” demanded a second performance on the spot. But Verdi remained uncertain and for several years refused to publish it—this music remained the property of a few of the composer’s friends. He relented and allowed the quartet to be published in 1876 and even went so far as to sanction performances by a string orchestra rather than a quartet; it is still sometimes heard in that version. The Quartet in E Minor has been called Verdi’s only nonvocal composition (and this is true so long as one regards his opera overtures—often performed as concert works—as part of vocal compositions). Strange as the thought of a string quartet by this most operatic of composers seems at first, it is really not so remarkable that Verdi would write a quartet—he owned the scores of the quartets of the classical composers, kept them by his bedside, and studied them with care. His own quartet may be regarded as the effort to fuse the discipline and economy of the string quartet with the vocal impulse at the center of his own creative imagination, and various critics have imagined that they hear echoes of his operas in this quartet: Aida in the opening movement,
Rigoletto and Il Trovatore in the third movement, Falstaff in the fugal finale. Yet we should grant Verdi his due and consider this music on its own terms: It is quite successful as a string quartet, and if its four movements do not conform exactly to the pattern established by the classical composers, they are nevertheless beautifully written for the four instruments. This quartet is also quite difficult and demands the most proficient players. The opening Allegro is in sonata form, with the dramatic first subject—announced by the second violin—set against a simple and appealing second subject marked dolce. The animated development treats the first theme; the music passes through E major as the shining second subject makes a brief reappearance, and then Verdi drives the movement to a firm close in E minor. The lyric Andantino is in ternary form, and its opening belongs to the first violin, whose part is scrupulously marked dolcissimo and con eleganza; the middle section grows turbulent before the return of the opening material and a quiet close. The Prestissimo is also inABAform: its opening—full of trills and bristling energy—is marked brillante; the trio section is one of the places that invariably strike listeners as “operatic,” and some have gone so far as to imagine the cello’s tune here as a song conceived for baritone. The finale has an unusual marking: Scherzo-Fuga. This movement is a fugue, and it is a scherzo, and in that sense it looks ahead twenty years to the finale of Falstaff, where the assembled cast sings a great fugue on the text Tutto nel mondo è burlo: “Everything in the world’s a jest.” Here the second violin announces the subject and is gradually joined by the other instruments in music of great precision and delicacy.At the end of this concise movement, the music rushes ahead on a (non-contrapuntal) coda marked Poco piu Presto, and Verdi brings his one venture into the world of chamber music to a dramatic close on four resounding E-major chords.
Italian Serenade HUGO WOLF
Born March 13, 1860, Windischgraz, Slovenia Died February 22, 1903, Vienna Composed:1887 Approximate Duration: 8 minutes
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.
String Quartet in D Major OTTORINO RESPIGHI
Born July 9, 1879, Bologna Died April 18, 1936, Rome Composed: 1904 Approximate Duration: 28 minutes
When we think of Respighi, we automatically think of opulent orchestral scores, full of vivid color and sonic punch. But Respighi was also very interested in chamber music.A fine violinist and violist, he was for some years a member of the Mugellini Quartet in Bologna, and he wrote for chamber ensembles throughout his life. If this music has never achieved the fame of his great orchestral works, it remains an interesting body of work.Among his chamber works are a fine Violin Sonata in B Minor (championed by Heifetz) and “Il tramonto,” a lovely setting of a Shelley poem for mezzosoprano and string quartet. Respighi composed about six string quartets, and probably the best-known of these is the Quartet in D Major, written in 1904. Respighi, who was playing in the Mugellini Quartet at this time, was still struggling to find an authentic voice as a composer. Some have heard the influence of Brahms—at that time dead for only seven years—on this quartet, and certainly it has a thicker, more Germanic, sonority than we are used to in Respighi’s music. It is also extraordinarily difficult technically, and the writing (particularly for the first violin) is quite demanding—this
music may give us some sense of how good a violinist Respighi must have been. Much of the part is very fast, exposed, and set high in the instrument’s register, and in fact this music challenges all four players. The four movements of the Quartet in D Major are in expected forms: a sonata-form first movement, a themeand-variation movement, a third movement that Respighi titles Intermezzo but which is in fact a scherzo, and a sonataform finale. The opening Allegro moderato is a big-boned movement, built on the first violin’s rising theme heard at the very beginning and a slower second subject. Textures can be thick in this movement, but already Respighi is sensitive to instrumental color, and the first violin has sustained passages in harmonics.After a vigorous working out of its material, the music vanishes on a gentle recall of its opening idea. The second movement begins with a twelve-measure melody, which Respighi then takes through some sharply contrasted variations. These include a transformation of the theme into a slow waltz, another variation that begins fugally, one marked Allegretto scherzando, and another titled Lento doloroso. This movement, which spotlights different instruments in the quartet, comes to a surprisingly fierce close. The Intermezzo has a slow two-measure introduction, and then the music races ahead on its skittering main idea. This movement feels in constant motion. Respighi offers an intense trio section marked Appassionato, then repeats the opening before another unexpected conclusion: the movement closes quietly with the instruments playing harmonics. The vigorous Allegro vivace finale returns to the manner and sonority of the opening movement. Much of the writing for the first violin is very high here, and Respighi supplies an equally firm second subject. Near the end, he recalls the very opening of the first movement before the dancing main theme of the finale drives the quartet to its conclusion in emphatic D major.
