ES MUSS SEIN (IT MUST BE!)

Fate is not something we can control, even if we try. Milan Kundera addresses the issue in The Unbearable Lightness of Being through the lens of Tomas, who realizes he must respond to his separation from Tereza by leaving Zurich and returning to her in Prague. “Es muss sein. Es muss sein,” Tomas says. He is quoting Beethoven, a stalwart believer in the concept of fate, who prints the phrase at the start of the last movement of his final string quartet, No. 16 in F major, Op. 135, under the title “Der schwer gefasste Entschluss,” or “the difficult decision.” Beethoven’s transcendent quartet shares a ChamberFest program with pieces by Russian-born composers for whom destiny played vital roles in the trajectory of their careers. Auerbach defected from her homeland in 1991 to pursue a new musical life. Taneyev was a titanic pianist and teacher — his students included Rachmaninoff, Gliere, and Scriabin — whose music was destined, unjustifiably, to loom in the shadows of works by such colleagues as Tchaikovksy and Rimsky-Korsakov.

Lera Auerbach, born in 1973 in Chelyabinsk, Soviet Union, has thrived not only as a composer, but also as a pianist, author, playwright, and visual artist. She has said that she was not influenced by Russian composers; she came to the United States at the age of 17 during a concert tour. But her music does have the expressive power of Shostakovich, if with a distinctive personality all its own. “To me, music is communication,” Auerbach told San Francisco Classical Voice in 2013. “Somehow I guess the intensity that I put into my work is able to translate to the listener, or reach the listener through the performers. It’s hard to tell. What I try to do as an artist is just to be very honest with each piece.”

In her Piano Trio No. 1, Op. 28, from the mid-1990s, Auerbach explores a range of moods packed into 13 minutes of music. The short Prelude begins with the piano introducing a darting theme soon answered by disembodied cello and violin playing harmonics. The cello sings mournfully in the Andante lamentoso, with the piano shaping rising figures and the violin offering hushed responses. The Presto finale shows another side of Auerbach’s art, full of energy, propulsion, and foreboding, the strings occasionally eerie. An audacious race leads the ensemble to a vehement close.

Ludwig van Beethoven never heard his String Quartet No. 16 in F major, Op. 135, in performance. It received its premiere in March 1828, a year after his death. The work is almost a summation of Beethoven’s achievement as composer of string quartets, at once charming, affecting, and aware of his place as artist and mortal. Unlike the revolutionary quartets immediately preceding it, Op. 135 embraces matters of Classical style with masterly humility. Which is not to say that the music is in any way conventional. Beethoven continually astonishes with a freshness of imagination and feeling that seizes us from the opening playful gestures to the finale’s delightful farewell.

With the instruments starting things off by teasing us in the first movement, we don’t discern the key of this F major quartet until the fifth bar. Beethoven constantly switches gears in rhythm, texture, and thematic material, stopping now and then to take a breath before tweaking what’s already been stated. The Vivace second movement finds the strings skipping blithely in offbeat patterns, with a dizzying dance midway that fades back and takes up earlier activity.

The third movement, marked “singing and tranquil,” is among the most touching in the Beethoven canon. Each instrument plays a crucial role in this act of musical reverence, moving slowly in the opening section and almost standing still as Beethoven continues his rumination. He returns to the movement’s key of D-flat major as the instruments expand on the main theme and bring the movement to peaceful resolution.

Beethoven generates the content of the finale from the “Muss es sein?”—“Es muss sein!” motives printed at the top of the movement beneath the heading “Der schwer gefasste Entschluss.” Whatever the “difficult decision” implied by the title, the motives take the ensemble through bright, endearing interplay interrupted by momentary darkness. “Muss es sein?” the strings plead before offering a hesitant “Es muss sein!” They tiptoe through a quick coda and wind up determined to put an exclamation point on the matter: “Es muss sein!” — and goodbye.

If Beethoven says what he needs to say in 24 minutes, Sergey Taneyev requires nearly twice as long to get his musical thoughts off his chest in the massive Piano Quintet in G minor, Op. 30 (1910-11). It is worth the effort onstage and off. Here is an extraordinary, and largely unknown, work that shows Taneyev (1856-1915) to be a composer of remarkable vision and technical prowess, as well as a Romanticist never reluctant to turn up the artistic heat. Tchaikovsky called him the “Russian Bach” for his mastery of polyphony; others dubbed him the “Russian Brahms” for similar reasons. The piano writing in the Quintet indulges in virtuosic flights, just as Taneyev evidently did at the keyboard. But the density of material for all the instruments also shows his command of counterpoint in richly colored and expressive splendor.

Taneyev is always clear about his emotional intentions. The opening of the first movement is marked Adagio mesto, slowly and sad, with the piano intoning the initial theme and strings answering accordingly. They arrive suddenly at the main body, Allegro patetico, fast and pathetic. What follows is an extended unfolding of brooding, lyrical, and potent ideas that become more ardent as the instruments weave lines around one another. The players thunder and dance, commiserate and yearn. Taneyev’s penchant for chromaticism pervades the movement, which somehow never feels padded, even though the musicians (and listeners) are occupied for about 19 minutes. Think of Schubert’s “heavenly length” transferred to Russia, and you get the picture.

The remaining movements are shorter, though no less compelling. The Scherzo is an elfin march of intricate and captivating interplay, with piano and strings occasionally engaged in giddy competition. Taneyev changes course for a trio of lilting tenderness before returning to the opening march, with glittering piano figures adding to the festive atmosphere. The Largo begins with a heavy unison statement, followed by a passacaglia-like phrase in the cello that permeates the movement. Songful string lines, filigreed piano passages, and urgent melding of materials add to the striking and impassioned nature of the movement.

It may be wise to fasten seat belts for the finale, a profusion of ideas that alternate between ferocity, ardor, and grandeur. Taneyev somehow builds the narrative to greater heights as he knits instrumental lines together on the way to what can only be called a euphoric conclusion that his student Rachmaninoff must have envied.

© Donald Rosenberg

Friday 30

june 7:30pm