Alexander String Quartet: The Complete Shostakovich String Quartets - Year Two PROGRAM

Photo by Shirley Singer

Alexander String Quartet The Complete Shostakovich String Quartets: Year Two SUNDAY, OCTOBER 13, 2019 SUNDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2019 SUNDAY, JANUARY 5, 2020 SUNDAY, JUNE 7, 2020 Vanderhoef Studio Theatre Support provided by Thomas and Phyllis Farver

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with Robert Greenberg

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We should take a moment to acknowledge the land on which we are gathered.

For thousands of years, this land has been the home of Patwin people.

Today, there are three federally recognized Patwin tribes: Cachil DeHe Band of Wintun Indians of the Colusa Indian Community, Kletsel Dehe Wintun Nation, and Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation.

The Patwin people have remained committed to the stewardship of this land over many centuries. It has been cherished and protected, as elders have instructed the young through generations.

We are honored and grateful to be here today on their traditional lands. https://diversity.ucdavis.edu

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R O B E R T A N D M A R G R I T MONDAVI CENTER F O R T H E P E R F O R M I N G A R T S P R E S E N T S

Alexander String Quartet The Complete Shostakovich String Quartets: Year Two Zakarias Grafilo, violin Frederick Lifsitz, violin Paul Yarbrough, viola Sandy Wilson, cello 2PM PERFORMANCES: Musicologist, author and composer Robert Greenberg provides commentary throughout the concert.

7PM PERFORMANCES: The quartet performs this program without intermission, then remains for a Q&A session with the audience.

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 13, 2019 • 2PM & 7PM SUNDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2019 • 2PM & 7PM SUNDAY, JANUARY 5, 2020 • 2PM & 7PM SUNDAY, JUNE 7, 2020 • 2PM & 7PM Vanderhoef Studio Theatre Support provided by

Thomas and Phyllis Farver

The Alexander String Quartet is represented by BesenArts LLC 7 Delaney Place Tenafly, NJ 07670-1607 www.BesenArts.com The Alexander String Quartet records for FoghornClassics www.asq4.com

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Alexander String Quartet The Complete Shostakovich String Quartets: Year Two PROGRAM

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 13, 2019 • 2PM & 7PM

P. 6

String Quartet No. 7 in F-sharp Minor, Op. 108 (1960) Dmitri Shostakovich

Allegretto (1906–1975) Lento Allegro—Allegretto INTERMISSION (2PM only) String Quartet No. 8 in C Minor, Op. 110 (1960)

Largo

Allegro molto Allegretto Largo Largo

Shostakovich

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2019 • 2PM & 7PM

P. 7

String Quartet No. 9 in E-flat Major, Op. 117 (1964) Dmitri Shostakovich

Moderato con moto (1906–1975) Adagio Allegretto Adagio Allegro String Quartet No. 10 in A-flat Major, Op. 118 (1964) Shostakovich

Andante

Allegretto Adagio Allegretto—Andante INTERMISSION (2PM only) String Quartet No. 11 in F Minor, Op. 122 (1966) Shostakovich

Introduction: Andantino

Scherzo: Allegretto

Recitative: Adagio

Etude: Allegro

Humoresque: Allegro

Elegy: Adagio

Finale: Moderato Allegretto—Allegretto

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PROGRAM

SUNDAY, JANUARY 5, 2020 • 2PM & 7PM

P. 9

String Quartet No. 12 in D-flat Major, Op. 133 (1968) Dmitri Shostakovich

Moderato (1906–1975)

Moderato Allegretto —Adagio —Moderato —Adagio —Moderato —Allegretto INTERMISSION (2PM only) String Quartet No. 13 in B-flat Minor, Op. 138 (1970) Shostakovich

Adagio—Doppio movimento—Tempo primo

SUNDAY, JUNE 7, 2020 • 2PM & 7PM

P. 10

String Quartet No. 14 in F-sharp Major, Op. 142 (1973) Dmitri Shostakovich

Allegretto (1906–1975) Adagio— Allegretto INTERMISSION (2PM only) String Quartet No. 15 in E-flat Minor, Op. 144 (1974) Shostakovich

Elegy: Adagio

Serenade: Adagio

Intermezzo: Adagio

Nocturne: Adagio

Funeral March: Adagio molto

Epilogue: Adagio—Adagio molto

The artists and fellow audience members appreciate silence during the performance. Please be sure that you have switched off cellular phones, watch alarms and pager signals. Videotaping, photographing and audio recording are strictly forbidden. Violators are subject to removal.

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PROGRAM NOTES

Allegro. Aggressive salvos of three-note figures preface a slashing fugue, introduced by the viola, and during this fugue’s powerful development, Shostakovich recalls themes from the earlier movements. At the climax, all four instruments shout out the skittering little dance tune that opened the quartet, and the music comes to a cadence that should be the close.

Sunday, October 13, 2019 DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH Born September 25, 1906, St. Petersburg Died August 9, 1975, Moscow String Quartet No. 7 in F-sharp Minor, Op. 108 In May 1932, when he was 26, Shostakovich married Nina Varzar, a bright, beautiful, 23-year-old physicist. It would prove a successful but stormy marriage. The storms were so severe, in fact, that within three years they were divorced.

And at just the moment the divorce became final, they discovered that Nina was pregnant with their first child. The couple decided to give their relationship another chance, and they quickly remarried. Daughter Galina was born in 1936, son Maxim two years later. In December 1954, Nina died suddenly, leaving behind the composer—then 48—and two teenaged children. Devastated, Shostakovich in 1956 made an impulsive second marriage, which ended in divorce in 1959.

That year would have been Nina’s 50th birthday, and—with his second marriage coming to an end—Shostakovich’s thoughts turned to memories of his first wife. He began a new string quartet, which would be his seventh, and planned to dedicate it to her memory. He completed the first movement, but set the quartet aside to compose his first cello concerto during the summer of 1959 and then to go on a tour of the United States and Mexico that fall. Once he returned to Moscow, Shostakovich was hospitalized for treatment of his right hand, which was gradually losing its strength. In the hospital he resumed work on the quartet and completed it in March 1960. The first performance, by the Beethoven Quartet, took place in Leningrad on May 15, 1 960.

One might expect such music dedicated to the memory of his first wife, and written under unhappy conditions, to be somber and grieving, but such descriptions hardly apply to the seventh quartet, which is original both in structure and expression. It is also quite compact: Its three movements (played without pause) last barely 12 minutes, and its themes are brief, almost epigrammatic; for example, the quartet takes much of its rhythmic energy from the very simple pattern of three quickly‑repeated notes.

The beginning of the Allegretto sounds almost playful, with the first violin skittering downward in a series of three‑note figures. A second theme—in the cello’s deep register and also built of three‑note patterns—arrives beneath the steady pulse of the middle voices. The development takes place largely in pizzicato notes, and the movement comes to a quiet close.

The Lento, muted throughout, follows without interruption.

Over quiet arpeggios from the second violin, the first violin sings a quiet melody that many will recognize as a quotation (slightly varied) from Shostakovich’s own fifth symphony. The middle section moves along darkly in the lower strings before a brief recall of the opening violin melody leads to the final

But it is not. Shostakovich instead appends a final section that almost becomes a fourth movement. He mutes the instruments, and now the swirling first violin part seems to dance off into new regions, but suddenly the quartet’s opening theme returns and dissolves into fragments. Music that only moments before had bristled with energy now seems spent, and the quartet concludes on a quiet chord.

Perhaps what is most remarkable about the seventh quartet is what it is not. In music dedicated to the memory of his first wife, Shostakovich refuses to make predictable gestures and instead writes music of extraordinary emotional focus and technical control, a quartet that finally becomes—on its own quite compelling terms—haunting and moving music.

String Quartet No. 8 in C Minor, Op. 110 In the summer of 1960 Shostakovich went to Dresden, where he was to write a score for the film Five Days, Five Nights, a joint East German and Soviet production. The devastation of Dresden by Allied bombing in 1945—the event that drove Kurt Vonnegut to write Slaughterhouse Five—was still evident in 1960, and it stunned the composer. He interrupted his work on the film score and in the space of three days (July 12–14) wrote his String Quartet No. 8, dedicated “To the memory of the victims of fascism and war.”

The eighth quartet has become the most frequently performed of Shostakovich’s 15 quartets, but this intense music appears to have been the product of much more than an encounter with the horrors of war—it sprang straight from its creator’s soul. In it, Shostakovich quotes heavily from his own works: there are quotations from the first, fifth, 10th and 11th symphonies, Piano Trio in E Minor, Cello Concerto No. 1, and his opera, Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, as well as from several Russian songs. The quartet also uses as its central theme Shostakovich’s musical “signature”: He took the letters DSCH (D for Dmitri and SCH from the first three letters of his last name in its German spelling) and set down their musical equivalents: D, Es (E-flat in German notation), C, H (B in German notation). That motto, D-Eb-C-B, is the first thing one hears in this quartet, and it permeates the entire work.

Why should a quartet inspired by the destruction of a foreign city (and an “enemy” city at that) have turned into so personal a piece of music for its composer? Vasily Shirinsky—second violinist of the Beethoven Quartet, which gave the premiere— offered the official Soviet explanation of so dark a work: “In this music, there is a portrait of Shostakovich, the musician, the citizen, and the protector of peaceful and progressive humanity.” But in Testimony, Shostakovich’s much disputed memoirs, the composer strongly suggests that the quartet is

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not about fascism but is autobiographical and is about suffering, and he cites his quotation of the song Languishing in Prison and of the “Jewish theme” from the Piano Trio as pointing a way toward understanding the quartet.

In her recent biography of the composer, Laurel Fay suggests an even darker autobiographical significance. In the spring of 1960, just before his trip to Dresden, Shostakovich was named head of the Union of Composers of the Soviet Federation, and the Russian government clearly expected such a position to be held by a party member. Under pressure to join the party, the composer reluctantly agreed and then was overwhelmed by regret and guilt. There is evidence that he intended that the eighth quartet, a work full of autobiographical meaning, should be his final composition and that he planned to kill himself upon his return to Moscow. Five days after completing the quartet, Shostakovich wrote to a friend: “However much I tried to draft my obligations for the film, I just couldn’t do it. Instead I wrote an ideologically deficient quartet nobody needs. I reflected that if I die someday then it’s hardly likely anyone will write a work dedicated to my memory. So I decided to write one myself. You could even write on the cover: ‘Dedicated to the memory of the composer of this quartet.’”

Was the eighth quartet to be Shostakovich’s epitaph for himself?

The quartet is extremely compact and focused—its five interconnected movements last 20 minutes. The brooding Largo opens with the DSCH motto in the solo cello, which soon turns into the fanfare from the first symphony, followed in turn by a quotation from the fifth symphony. The movement, somber and beautiful, suddenly explodes into the Allegro molto, in which the first violin’s pounding quarter notes recall the “battle music” from the composer’s wartime eighth symphony. At the climax of this movement comes what Shostakovich called the “Jewish theme,” which seems to shriek out above the sounds of battle. The Allegretto is a ghostly waltz in which the first violin dances high above the other voices. Each of the final two movements is a Largo. The fourth is built on exploding chords that some have compared to gunshots, others to the fatal knock on the door in the middle of the night. At the climax of this movement come the quotations from the prison song—and in the cello’s high register—from Shostakovich’s opera, Lady Macbeth. The fifth movement returns to the mood and music of the first. The DSCH motto enters fugally and many of the quartet’s earlier themes are recalled before the music closes very quietly on a chord marked morendo.

The film for which Shostakovich was to write the score that summer was a typical product of Cold War propaganda. A joint work by Russian and East German filmmakers, Five Days, Five Nights told the politically-correct confabulation that heroic Russian troops had entered Dresden in February 1945 and helped preserve the city’s artistic treasures from Allied bombing. In fact, Russian troops were nowhere near Dresden during the bombing. Shostakovich’s score for the film is unremarkable except that it too makes use of quotations: In

the course of the music, the theme from the finale of Beethoven’s ninth symphony gradually breaks in on Shostakovich’s own music. And for the record: On September 14, 1960—two months after composing the eighth quartet— Shostakovich officially became a member of the Communist Party.

PROGRAM NOTES Sunday, December 8, 2019 DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH Born September 25, 1906, St. Petersburg Died August 9, 1975, Moscow String Quartet No. 9 in E-flat Major, Op. 117 Composing a ninth string quartet proved unusually difficult for Shostakovich. He began it in the early 1960s and apparently intended that it should be about the world of a child: It was to be composed on themes he had written as a child, and he said that it would be a “children’s work (about toys and excursions).” But it did not go well. The Beethoven Quartet had hoped to premiere the new work in the fall of 1962, but the composer kept putting them off, and finally it turned out that he had destroyed the manuscript, saying that “in an attack of healthy self-criticism, I burnt it in the stove.”

The real ninth quartet (or, more exactly, the one that has survived) was composed during the summer of 1964, when the 58-year-old Shostakovich wrote two quartets; they were first performed as part of the same program on November 20, 1964, in Moscow.

It had been four years since Shostakovich wrote his eighth quartet, whose haunted vision had been inspired by the devastation of Dresden in World War II, and the two new quartets explore different territory. The ninth quartet is very tightly unified. Its five movements are played without pause, and those movements are further linked by close thematic connections: Certain theme-shapes evolve continuously across the unbroken span of this music. The ninth quartet is also distinctive for its sonority. The first sound one hears is the oscillating accompaniment of the second violin, and that sound—murmuring, rocking, throbbing—will recur at many different speeds and dynamics throughout this quartet. The composer dedicated this quartet to Irina Antonovna Shostakovich, his third wife, whom he had married in the fall of 1962.

The Allegretto con moto begins with the murmuring sound of the second violin, and Shostakovich lays out his three seminal theme-shapes over the next few minutes: the first violin’s plaintive first idea, heard immediately; the cello’s staccato second subject, sung beneath pizzicato accompaniment from the other voices; and the first violin’s saucy rhythmic figure that completes the exposition (this last theme will grow in importance as the quartet proceeds). Here it leads the way into the Adagio, built on a somber, chorale-like melody in F-sharp minor. As this movement unfolds, the second theme

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of the opening Allegretto enters into the melodic extension, and Shostakovich rounds matters off with the first violin’s transition—played with mute—to the third movement. This transition gradually outlines the shape of the main idea of that scherzo, marked simply Allegro. Listeners may recognize within that shape the outlines of the final theme of the opening movement, and now this transformed melody dances brightly along the scherzo’s skittering textures—such continuous transformation of themes is fundamental to the technique of the ninth quartet.

The restrained Allegretto opens with solo violin, and only gradually do the other voices enter. A somber second theme is heard in the cello, but there is no development, and this brief movement comes to a quiet close. The second movement is a violent scherzo marked Allegretto furioso. The emphasis here is on the furioso, for this is one of those abrasive, slashing Shostakovich scherzos. There are contrasting episodes for cello, but this movement drives straight to its abrupt conclusion.

Gradually the scherzo loses energy, and its central theme rounds down into the oscillating rhythm that is also central to this quartet. On this rocking sound, the Adagio begins.

Shostakovich interrupts its quiet flow with solo pizzicato outbursts from the second violin and the viola, and the music rises to an intense climax that reprises the quartet’s principal ideas. Once again, quietly-oscillating textures lead to the finale, a lengthy Allegro that bursts to life as the first violin shouts out its dancing main idea. This movement is driven along by a sort of manic energy, and listeners will hear familiar shapes transformed and made to join in this dance. At the climax, Shostakovich gives the cello a grand cadenza beneath quiet tremolo accompaniment from the other strings. The movement gathers strength and rushes to its close, where the quartet’s principal thematic cell is hammered out one final time.

The final two movements are much longer and form the expressive core of the quartet. The third movement is a slow passacaglia, with its fundamental theme–marked fortissimo and espressivo announced by the cello; Shostakovich then offers nine restrained and moving variations over this ground bass, which alternates 3/4 and 4/4 meters. The final movement begins without a break, as the viola’s dance tune emerges from the long chords that close the passacaglia. This dance tune is a somber little melody that continues throughout the movement. The music rises to a climax, and then Shostakovich begins to bring back the themes of the earlier movements, setting them against this movement’s dance tune, which chugs along steadily in the background. Gradually the music grows quiet, the dance tune dissolves, and it is on fragments of this melody that the 10th quartet comes to its very quiet close.

String Quartet No. 10 in A-flat Major, Op. 118

String Quartet No. 11 in F Minor, Op. 122

Shostakovich and his wife spent the summer of 1964 at the retreat the Soviet government maintained for composers at Dilizhan in Armenia. There, far from the demands on his time in Moscow, the composer could work in peace, and that summer the music came quickly: He wrote his 10th string quartet in just 12 days (July 9–20). The premiere of both the 9th and 10th quartets took place in Moscow on November 20 of that year, only weeks after Brezhnev had deposed Khrushchev.

In the summer of 1965, violinist Vasily Petrovich Shirinsky died. For over 40 years Shirinsky had been a friend of Shostakovich and also the second violinist of the Beethoven Quartet. That fall, Shostakovich set to work on a new string quartet, his 11th, and dedicated it to Shirinsky’s memory. The quartet was completed in January 1966, and after several private performances, the Beethoven Quartet (with a new second violinist) gave the official premiere in Leningrad on May 28, 1966.

In the years since his death, Shostakovich’s 15 quartets have been accorded new respect and now stand with his 15 symphonies as the core of his achievement, and many have been quick to suggest that Shostakovich’s quartets somehow represent the inner man, while the symphonies are more “public” statements and thus less personal. That may be too easy a generalization, but it is true that Shostakovich’s quartets, particularly the late ones, have an unusual intensity.

As is fitting in a memorial piece, the 11th quartet is somber music. It is also extremely original in structure, consisting of seven connected movements that last a total of only 16 minutes. The 11th quartet has been described as a suite of quartet movements rather than an actual string quartet, but its thematic concentration, emotional unity, and Shostakovich’s economic development of just two fundamental ideas across the span of seven sharply-contrasted movements place this work squarely within quartet form.

The lean and dark 10th quartet (much of the writing is in the lowest register of all four instruments) has been praised as one of the finest of Shostakovich’s late works, but beyond the praise critics agree about little else. One has called the 10th “the happiest, most optimistic work of all his compositions,” while another sees a quite different side of this music and speaks of it as “deeply powerful and intensely felt.” As always, these issues are best left to the individual listener to decide.

Beneath the dark surface of this music, Shostakovich remains very much the classical composer: This quartet is built on such time-honored structures as the passacaglia, scherzo, rondo, and sonata form.

The 11th quartet has a beautiful beginning. The Introduction opens with a lament for solo violin that soars and falls back, soars and falls, constantly changing keys. Almost immediately the cello has a measured figure in its lowest register— Shostakovich will build the entire quartet out of variations on these two themes. The Introduction concludes with the opening violin melody high over fragments of the cello theme, but at the Scherzo the cello theme is suddenly transformed into the subject of a quick-paced fugue. The first violin introduces the fugue subject, and the other instruments enter to the accompaniment of swooping glissandos and harmonics.

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The steady pulse of eighth-notes continues throughout, finally dissolving into fragments and resolving on the viola’s low C. The brief Recitative opens with an explosion from the lower strings before the first violin enters in double-stops; the shape of the scherzo theme returns very quietly here. The Etude is a perpetual-motion movement which, as its name suggests, sounds like an exercise. First violin and later the cello have an unending rush of 16th notes here, and again the scherzo theme is implied very subtly in the background. The Humoresque features a demonic second violin that chirps out the interval of a minor third throughout, like a cuckoo gone slightly mad; over that steady pulse, the other strings offer fierce fragments of the scherzo theme. The Elegy returns to the mood of the very beginning: over grieving lower strings, the two violins have an extended variation of the opening melody. The Finale is muted throughout. It opens with the fugue theme, but soon this gives way to music from the beginning: Solo violin sings its lamentation while far below the other voices have bits of the fugue theme. These fragments gradually fall away, and finally the 11th quartet ends with the first violin all alone, its high C shimmering into silence. It is a very effective conclusion to a very effective piece of music.

PROGRAM NOTES Sunday, January 5, 2020 DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH Born September 25, 1906, St. Petersburg Died August 9, 1975, Moscow String Quartet No. 12 in D-flat Major, Op. 133 The official Soviet position on serial composition was completely negative: The Soviets believed that Schoenberg’s theory of composing with sequences of 12 tones was the worst sort of “formalism”—music separated from natural impulses and alien to the tastes of the public. But late in his career, at a time when his standing as a composer was secure, Shostakovich became intrigued by certain possibilities inherent in serial procedures, and 12-note sequences appeared in several works, principally the String Quartet No. 12 and the Violin Sonata, both composed in 1968. Questioned about this during his final visit to the United States in 1973, Shostakovich told an interviewer: “I did use some element of dodecaphony in these works. Of course, if you take a theory and use solely this theory, I have a very negative attitude toward this kind of approach. But if a composer feels that he needs this or that technique, he can take whatever is available and use it as he sees fit. It is his right to do so. But if you take only one technique, whether it is aleatory or dodecaphonic, and use nothing but that technique, then it is wrong.”

This comment is the best possible introduction to his String Quartet No. 12, for while 12-tone rows appear in this quartet, the music’s harmonic language remains tonal—Shostakovich treats the 12-note sequence not as a row but as a theme to be developed in traditional ways. The quartet is in a specific key, D-flat Major, and however chromatic Shostakovich’s

development may become, the music remains firmly anchored in that home key, as the triumphant conclusion demonstrates.

Shostakovich’s encounter with 12-tone music in this quartet is more a flirtation than an embrace—it is as if he raises the issue just to get beyond it.

The 12th quartet has an unusual structure: A brief opening movement is followed by a long second movement that breaks down into smaller sections at different speeds and in contrasted moods. Some observers have been quick to relate these sections to the slow movement, scherzo, and so on, of the traditional string quartet, but such a reading straitjackets Shostakovich’s original music into other molds. Far better to take this music on its own terms than to attempt to understand it in ways that may be alien to it.

Solo cello opens the Moderato with the 12-note sequence that will recur throughout the quartet, but the first true theme, firmly tonal, follows immediately in the first violin. That same instrument has the lilting second idea at the Allegretto, another sequence of the 12 tones. Shostakovich’s treatment of these ideas can be full of chromatic tension, but the movement remains fundamentally harmonic, and it comes to a quiet close.

The long second movement opens with fierce trills in the upper instruments as the cello spits out the five-note rhythmic cell that will run through this movement. This opening section, which can be quite abrasive, gives way to a long Adagio, introduced by solo cello—its somber song is answered by a dark chant from the muted upper voices, harmonized triadically. Material from the first movement begins to reappear here, and the Moderato fuses some of these ideas as it builds to a huge climax punctuated by biting chords. Finally, the dancing first violin draws us into the concluding Allegretto section, derived from the cello’s fivenote cell at the opening of this movement. This section drives with great energy to its close, where the rhythm of that cell rockets home in triumphant D-flat major. In the 12th quartet, Shostakovich may raise the issue of chromatic music, but only as a starting point—the form and treatment of these ideas is anything but chromatic, and at the end the quartet seems to thumb its nose defiantly at the whole issue of atonality.

Shostakovich completed the 12th quartet on March 11, 1968, and the Beethoven Quartet gave several private performances that June. Shostakovich, who knew that this music represented new directions for him, was quite pleased with these performances and with his new creation. Shostakovich dedicated this music to the Beethoven Quartet’s first violinist, Dmitri Tsyganov, and that quartet gave the public premiere Moscow on September 14, 1968.

String Quartet No. 13 in B-flat Minor, Op. 138 Shostakovich never felt particularly bound by the traditional four-movement structure of the classical string quartet. In fact, his 4th quartet of 1949 was his final quartet in four movements, and some of his late quartets represent complete re-imaginings of what the string quartet might be: His 11th

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quartet, for example, is a suite of seven movements, the 15th is in six interconnected movements, the 12th consists of only two movements. The most experimental of all his quartets, however, may be the 13th, which consists of one continuous movement that lasts about 18 minutes. But the originality of the 13th quartet goes beyond its form. The voicing here is often quite original: Shostakovich sets the instruments in unusual registers and combines them in unexpected ways (and in fact the cello does not play at all during the final two minutes of this quartet). This quartet also gives unusual prominence to the viola, and for a very specific reason.

In 1923, four young string players at the Moscow Conservatory formed a quartet that would eventually become known as the Beethoven Quartet, and they quickly became good friends with the star composition student at the rival St. Petersburg Conservatory, Dmitri Shostakovich. The Beethoven Quartet’s close relation with the composer would last for over half a century, and they gave the premieres of 13 of his quartets (all but the first and last). By the late 1960s, however, the effect of time was becoming all too clear: Shostakovich suffered from debilitating illness over the final decade of his life, and the quartet lost two of its original members—second violinist Vasily Shirinsky died and violist Vadim Borisovsky retired. As a gesture of lifelong respect and gratitude, Shostakovich dedicated each of his String Quartets Nos. 11 through 14 to a different member of the quartet. He composed the String Quartet No. 13 in B-flat Minor during the summer of 1970, completing it on August 10, and dedicated it to violist Borisovsky on the occasion of his 70th birthday (Borisovsky had at that point already retired from the quartet). With its new members, the Beethoven Quartet gave the quartet several private hearings before the official premiere on December 13, 1970, in Leningrad.

The 13th quartet may have been written to commemorate a birthday, but there is nothing festive about this music. Its one movement is in a broad ternary form: The opening Adagio gives way to a long central episode at twice that tempo before the final section returns to the opening tempo. Set in the dark key of B-flat minor, the quartet opens with a spare viola solo marked espressivo. Gradually the other voices enter, the music rises to a dissonant outburst, and the opening section gives way to the central section, marked Doppio movimento and announced by the first violin’s chirping three-note patterns.

These patterns of three-note attacks gradually build to a strident climax in which three-note patterns are hammered out by the entire quartet. Then the music launches into an eerie dance that skitters along triplet rhythms and is punctuated by the sound of the players tapping their bows on their instruments. This unsettled music—wild in its hardedged energy and strange sounds—is the most Bartókian moment in the entire cycle of Shostakovich’s quartets.

Gradually this dance winds down, and ominous trills and a return of the three-note patterns lead to a return of the opening tempo. But now that opening music has become even darker. In the course of this closing section, for which Shostakovich mutes all four instruments, there is a long duet, murmuring and subdued, for viola and cello, and then the

cello vanishes. The final word is left to the viola, whose bleak soliloquy (sometimes set at the extreme upper limit of that instrument’s range) leads to the jolting cadence: On its final note, the viola is rejoined by the (unmuted) violins, and these three instruments shriek out the concluding B-flat.

PROGRAM NOTES Sunday, June 7, 2020 DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH Born September 25, 1906, St. Petersburg Died August 9, 1975, Moscow String Quartet No. 14 in F-sharp Major, Op. 142 Composers often write music with the talents of particular performers in mind. Brahms wrote all of his violin music for Joseph Joachim, Rachmaninoff remarked late in life that whenever he began to compose his thoughts turned to the Philadelphia Orchestra, and Benjamin Britten conceived almost all his vocal music for the voice and musical sensibilities of Peter Pears. Shostakovich had a similar relationship with the Beethoven Quartet, and it was a bond that literally lasted a lifetime. In 1923, four young string players at the Moscow Conservatory formed a quartet that would survive with its original members for nearly half a century. These young players, who soon took the name Beethoven Quartet, soon became friends with the very young Dmitri Shostakovich, and he wrote his quartets with their sound specifically in mind—the Beethoven Quartet gave the premieres of 13 of his 15 string quartets, and Shostakovich was the pianist when the quartet gave the premiere of his Piano Quintet in 1940. By the early 1970s, however, time and poor health had begun to take their toll on both Shostakovich and the Beethoven Quartet, and several of its members were replaced by younger players. To commemorate his lifelong relationship with the quartet, Shostakovich dedicated his string quartets 11 through 14 to each of its four original members; the String Quartet No. 14 is dedicated to Sergei Shirinsky, the cellist. Shostakovich sketched this quartet in the summer and fall of 1972 and completed it in Copenhagen on April 23, 1973, just before boarding an ocean liner (Shostakovich hated to fly) for the United States, where Northwestern University granted him an honorary degree in June 1973.

Given the dedication to Shirinsky, it is not surprising that the cello has so prominent a role in this quartet, which is in three movements: two Allegrettos frame a central Adagio, and themes from that slow movement return at the very end of the quartet to round it off. Despite moments of jagged intensity, the 14th quartet is for the most part free of the darkness that shades so many of Shostakovich’s final works—in fact, much of this music is peaceful and playful.

That sense of play is evident from the very beginning, where the cello announces the relaxed main idea, which descends and then, inverted, rises; the energetic rhythm of this theme will pulse throughout much of the movement. The second theme-group, somewhat more restrained, arrives in the first

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violin, and the movement drives to a climax. A long cello solo, very much like a cadenza, draws the Allegretto toward its close, and the music dances into silence on fragments of its opening theme.

The mood changes sharply at the Adagio, which is in a sort of ternary form. Textures are much leaner here, and the entire opening statement, bleak and somber, belongs to the first violin all by itself. The music grows to an intense climax, then returns to the lonely textures of the opening. Shostakovich proceeds without pause into the finale. The tentative threenote figures that conclude the Adagio now accelerate to become the fundamental rhythm of the last movement, which opens with a quotation from Shostakovich’s opera, Lady Macbeth. This quotation—which in the opera sets the words “Serezha, my dear! My dear!”—is a message of affection from Shostakovich to his longtime friend Sergei Shirinsky. This opening gives way to an animated sequence in which bits of theme ricochet between the instruments—the energy level is very high here—and there follows a series of episodes, some strident and harsh but others lyric and tender. As he nears the close, Shostakovich recalls themes from the Adagio, and the cello takes a leading role in their presentation; the music fades beautifully into silence.

The first performance of the 14tth quartet, a private one, was given by the Beethoven Quartet before the members of U.S.S.R. Composers Union on October 30, 1973. The public premiere, again by the Beethoven Quartet, took place in Leningrad two weeks later, on November 12.

String Quartet No. 15 in E-flat Minor, Op. 144 It has become a cliché with certain critics that all the music of Shostakovich’s final years is haunted by the thought of death.

That is not always true—some of his late music speaks very firmly of life—but in the case of the 15th quartet that cliché appears only too true. Shostakovich’s final years were miserable: He died of lung cancer but also suffered from a degenerative muscular disease that denied him the use of his right hand, and his final string quartet seems to speak directly from that agony.

Shostakovich composed the quartet early in 1974, completing it on May 17. The parts were copied, and that fall he began rehearsals with his favorite quartet, the Beethoven Quartet.

That quartet, founded in 1923 by four students at the Moscow Conservatory, had given the premieres of 13 of the composer’s first 14 quartets, and Shostakovich commemorated a halfcentury friendship by dedicating each of his Quartets Nos. 11 through 14 to a different member of the Beethoven Quartet.

The quartet had begun rehearsals of his 15th quartet when cellist Sergei Shirinsky died suddenly on October 18. The devastated composer dedicated the quartet to Shirinsky’s memory, but transferred the premiere to the young Taneyev Quartet, and that group gave the first performance on November 15, 1974, in Leningrad. The Beethoven Quartet, with a replacement cellist, was able to perform the quartet on January 11, 1975. Seven months later, Shostakovich died in a Moscow hospital.

His final string quartet is a somber work, to say the least.

Nearly 40 minutes long, it consists of six adagios played without pause. A work made up entirely of slow movements poses particular problems for a composer, for the performers, and for the audience. Nearly two centuries earlier, Joseph Haydn had faced exactly this problem in his Seven Last Words of Christ, also written for string quartet. Haydn noted that it is “no easy task to compose seven adagios, lasting approximately 10 minutes each, and to succeed one another without fatiguing the listener,” and he solved that problem by varying the mood, tonality, and texture of his successive slow movements. But where Haydn’s Seven Last Words of Christ is fired by his religious faith, Shostakovich’s 15th quartet speaks from the despair of his final years. The dark E-flat minor tonality remains constant across the six movements (often under considerable chromatic tension), textures are often thin, and the music seems to proceed numbly across its long span. Despite an occasional flash of sunlight, the landscape of Shostakovich’s final quartet is dark and bleak, and the names of some of the movements—“Elegy,” “Nocturne,” “Funeral March”—make clear its content.

Like another late multi-movement quartet, Beethoven’s Quartet in C-sharp Minor, Shostakovich’s 15th opens with a slow and expressive fugue. Though Shostakovich does not ask that it be played without vibrato, there is nevertheless an icy stillness to the string sound he generates in this long movement, which is relieved only by a brief excursion into C major. Here, and throughout the quartet, Shostakovich’s voicing is unusual, with the lower strings sometimes set high above the violins.

The Serenade feels like an experiment in sound as one-note crescendos are snapped between the instruments. A wistful waltz runs through this movement, and this proceeds directly into the very brief Intermezzo, in which the first violin races ahead on a flurry of 32nd notes; beneath this rush Shostakovich recalls some of the material from the Serenade.

The Nocturne is one of the most appealing movements of the quartet: All four instruments are muted, and the viola sings its long somber song within a filigree of interlocking eighths from the other voices. Fierce dotted chords open the Funeral March, and solo instruments rise above these outbursts with long, lonely melodies. The Epilogue recalls material from the early movements, particularly the fugal idea of the opening Elegy. These are set off from one another by episodes of furious 32nd notes from the first violin (the faster pulse of these sections defeats somewhat the notion that this is a slow movement), and Shostakovich makes his way to the end of his last quartet on a final bleak E-flat minor chord that is itself unsettled by the viola’s trill.

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ALEXANDER STRING QUARTET The Alexander String Quartet has performed in the major music capitals of five continents, securing its standing among the world’s premier ensembles, and a major artistic presence in its home base of San Francisco, serving since 1989 as ensemble-in-residence of San Francisco Performances and directors of The Morrison Chamber Music Center at San Francisco State University. Widely admired for its interpretations of Beethoven, Mozart and Shostakovich, the quartet’s recordings have won international critical acclaim.

They have established themselves as important advocates of new music, commissioning dozens of new works from composers including Jake Heggie, Cindy Cox, Augusta Read Thomas, Robert Greenberg, Cesar Cano, Tarik O’Regan, Paul Siskind and Pulitzer Prize–winner Wayne Peterson. Samuel Carl Adams’s new Quintet with Pillars was premiered and has been widely performed across the U.S. by the Alexander String Quartet with pianist Joyce Yang, and will be introduced to European audiences in the 2020–21 season.

The Alexander String Quartet’s annual calendar includes engagements at major halls throughout North America and Europe. They have appeared at Lincoln Center, the 92nd Street Y and the Metropolitan Museum; Jordan Hall; the Library of Congress; and chamber music societies and universities across the North American continent including Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Lewis and Clark, Pomona, UCLA, the Krannert Center, Purdue and many more. Recent overseas tours include the U.K., the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Italy, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, France, Greece, the Republic of Georgia, Argentina, Panama and the Philippines. Their visit to Poland’s Beethoven Easter Festival is beautifully captured in the 2017 award-winning documentary, Con Moto: The Alexander String Quartet.

Distinguished musicians with whom the Alexander String Quartet has collaborated include pianists Joyce Yang, Roger Woodward, Menachem Pressler, Marc-André Hamelin and Jeremy Menuhin; clarinetists Joan Enric Lluna, Richard Stoltzman and Eli Eban; soprano Elly Ameling; mezzosopranos Joyce DiDonato and Kindra Scharich; violinist Midori; violist Toby Appel; cellists Lynn Harrell, Sadao Harada and David Requiro; and jazz greats Branford Marsalis, David Sanchez and Andrew Speight. The quartet has worked with many composers including Aaron Copland, George Crumb and Elliott Carter, and enjoys a close relationship with composer-lecturer Robert Greenberg, performing numerous lecture-concerts with him annually.

Recording for the FoghornClassics label, their release in 2019 of the late quartets of Mozart, has received critical acclaim (“Exceptionally beautiful performances of some extraordinarily beautiful music.” —Fanfare), as did their 2018 release of Mozart’s piano quartets with Joyce Yang (“These are by far, hands down and feet up, the most amazing performances of Mozart’s two piano quartets that have ever graced these ears” —Fanfare). Other major releases have included the combined string quartet cycles of Bartók and Kodály (“If ever an album had ‘Grammy nominee’ written on

its front cover, this is it.” —Audiophile Audition); the string quintets and sextets of Brahms with Toby Appel and David Requiro (“a uniquely detailed, transparent warmth” —Strings Magazine); the Schumann and Brahms piano quintets with Joyce Yang (“passionate, soulful readings of two pinnacles of the chamber repertory” —The New York Times); and the Beethoven cycle (“A landmark journey through the greatest of all quartet cycles” —Strings Magazine). Their catalog also includes the Shostakovich cycle, Mozart’s 10 famous quartets, and the Mahler song cycles in new transcriptions by Zakarias Grafilo, Alexander String Quartet’s violinist.

The Alexander String Quartet formed in New York City in 1981, capturing international attention as the first American quartet to win the London (now Wigmore) International String Quartet Competition in 1985. The quartet has received honorary degrees from Allegheny College and St. Lawrence University, and Presidential medals from Baruch College (CUNY). The Alexander String Quartet plays on a matched set of instruments made in San Francisco by Francis Kuttner, known as the Ellen M. Egger quartet.

—Eric Bromberger

ROBERT GREENBERG Robert Greenberg was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1954, and has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area since 1978.

Greenberg received a B.A. in music from Princeton University in 1976. In 1984, Greenberg received a Ph.D. in music composition from the University of California, Berkeley.

Greenberg has composed over 50 works for a wide variety of instrumental and vocal ensembles. Recent performances of his works have taken place in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, England, Ireland, Greece, Italy and the Netherlands, where his Child’s Play for String Quartet was performed at the Concertgebouw of Amsterdam.

Greenberg has received numerous honors, including being designated an official Steinway Artist, three Nicola de Lorenzo Composition Prizes, and three Meet-The-Composer grants. Notable commissions have been received from the Koussevitzky Foundation in the Library of Congress, the Alexander String Quartet, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, San Francisco Performances and the XTET ensemble. Greenberg is a board member and an artistic director of Composers, Inc., a composers’ collective/ production organization based in San Francisco. His music has been published by Fallen Leaf Press and CPP/Belwin, and recorded on the Innova label.

Greenberg has performed, taught, and lectured extensively across North America and Europe. He is currently music historian-in-residence with San Francisco Performances, where he has lectured and performed since 1994. He has served on the faculties of the University of California at Berkeley, California State University East Bay, and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where he chaired the

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Department of Music History and Literature from 1989–2001 and served as the director of the Adult Extension Division from 1991–1996. Greenberg has lectured for some of the most prestigious musical and arts organizations in the U.S., including the San Francisco Symphony (where for 10 years he was host and lecturer for the Symphony’s nationally acclaimed Discovery Series), the Chautauqua Institute (where he was the Everett Scholar-in-Residence during the 2006 season), the Ravinia Festival, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the Van Cliburn Foundation, the Nasher Sculpture Center, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, the Hartford Symphony Orchestra, Villa Montalvo, Music@Menlo and the University of British Columbia (where he was the Dal Grauer Lecturer in September of 2006). In addition, Greenberg is a soughtafter lecturer for businesses and business schools. For many years a member of the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School’s Advanced Management Program, he has spoken for such diverse organizations as S.C. Johnson, Canadian Pacific, Deutsches Bank, the University of California Haas School of Business Executive Seminar, the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, Harvard Business School Publishing, Kaiser-Permanente, the Strategos Institute, Quintiles Transnational, the Young Presidents’ Organization, the World Presidents’ Organization and the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco. Greenberg has been profiled in the Wall Street Journal, Inc. Magazine, the Times of London, the Los Angeles Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Jose Mercury News, the University of California Alumni Magazine, Princeton Alumni Weekly and Diablo Magazine. For 15 years Greenberg was the resident composer and music historian to National Public Radio’s Weekend All Things Considered and Weekend Edition, Sunday with Liane Hansen.

In February 2003, The Bangor Daily News (Maine) referred to Greenberg as the “Elvis of music history and appreciation,” an appraisal that has given him more pleasure than any other.

In May 1993, Greenberg recorded a 48-lecture course entitled How to Listen to and Understand Great Music for the Teaching Company/Great Courses Program of Chantilly, Virginia.

This course was named in the January, 1996 edition of Inc. Magazine as one of “The Nine Leadership Classics You’ve Never Read.” The Great Courses is the preeminent producer of college level courses-on-media in the U.S. Twenty-five further courses, including “Concert Masterworks,” “Bach and the High Baroque,” “The Symphonies of Beethoven,” “How to Listen to and Understand Opera,” “Great Masters,” “The Operas of Mozart,” “The Life and Operas of Verdi,” “The Symphony,” “The Chamber Music of Mozart,” “The Piano Sonatas of Beethoven,” “The Concerto,” “The Fundamentals of Music,” “The String Quartets of Beethoven,” “The Music of Richard Wagner” and “The Thirty Greatest Orchestral Works” have been recorded since, totaling over 550 lectures.

The courses are available on both CD and DVD formats and in book form.

Greenberg’s book, How to Listen to Great Music, was published

by Plume, a division of Penguin Books, in April, 2011.

Greenberg lives with his children Lillian and Daniel, wife Nanci, and a very cool Maine coon (cat) named Teddy, in the hills of Oakland, California.

Robert Greenberg is an official Steinway Artist.

gateway Shostakovich: “Deja Vu Revisited”

I

n his 15 string quartets, at least the second through the 15th, Shostakovich gives us a musical diary of terrible and terrifying aspects of life in the Soviet Union. Musical descriptions of murder, war, starvation, deceit, intrigue and depression. Revisiting this great cycle of quartets composed by a man who was deemed “an enemy of the people” by none other than Josef Stalin, is a reminder that although time may pass, many things remain the same.

“Enemy of the People,” should chill us today just as much as it did those so labeled by “Uncle Joe” Stalin and his prewar frenemies—the Nazis who resided restlessly on the other side of Poland.

—Frederick Lifsit, violinist, Alexander String Quartet

The corrupt and insecure government of Comrade Stalin is thriving today under Mr. Putin. People who speak out in Russia find themselves dead by “mysterious” occurrences today just as they did back in the 1930s, ’40s and early ’50s, though today polonium seems to be the method of choice rather than a bullet. Heroes died young in the Soviet Union when Shostakovich wrote his quartets.

Today in Russia, it seems, they still do. And that phrase, MONDAVI CENTER 2018 –19 |

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Thank you to the following donors whose support will leave a lasting impact on Mondavi Center programs.

James H. Bigelow Karen Broido Chan Family Fund Sandra Togashi Chong and Chris Chong John and Lois Crowe Richard and Joy Dorf

Mary B. Horton Barbara K. Jackson° Dean and Karen Karnopp Debbie Mah and Brent Felker Diane Marie Makley Rosalie Vanderhoef Verena Leu Young

Karen Merick and Clark Smith Joe and Linda Merva Cynthia Meyers Beryl Michaels and John Bach Leslie Michaels and Susan Katt Maureen Miller and Mary Johnson Sue and Rex Miller Vicki and Paul Moering James Moorfield Hallie Morrow Marcie Mortensson Rita Mt. Joy* Robert and Janet Mukai Bill and Diane Muller Robert Nevraumont and Donna Curley Nevraumont Kim T. Nguyen R. Noda Jay and Catherine Norvell Jeri and Clifford Ohmart Jim and Sharon Oltjen Andrew and Sharon* Opfell Mary Jo Ormiston* John and Nancy Owen Mike and Carlene Ozonoff Thomas Pavlakovich and Kathryn Demakopoulos Pete Peterson The Plante Family Jane Plocher Bonnie A. Plummer Harriet Prato Otto and Lynn Raabe Lawrence and Norma Rappaport Olga Raveling Catherine Ann Reed Fred and Martha Rehrman* Maxine and Bill Reichert David and Judy Reuben Russ and Barbara Ristine Jeannette and David Robertson Denise Rocha Jeep and Heather Roemer Ron and Mary Rogers Maurine Rollins Carol and John Rominger Richard and Evelyne Rominger Warren Roos Janet F. Roser, Ph.D. Cathy* and David Rowen Cynthia Jo Ruff* Paul and Ida Ruffin Joy and Richard Sakai* Jacquelyn Sanders Elia and Glenn Sanjume Fred and Pauline Schack Patsy Schiff

Leon Schimmel and Annette Cody Dan Shadoan and Ann Lincoln Jeanie Sherwood Jennifer Sierras Jo Anne S. Silber Teresa Simi Robert Snider and Jak Jarasjakkrawhal Jean Snyder Nancy Snyder William and Jeannie Spangler* Curtis and Judy Spencer Tim and Julie Stephens Judith and Richard Stern Deb and Jeff Stromberg George and June Suzuki Bob Sykes Yayoi Takamura and Jeff Erhardt Stewart and Ann Teal Julie Theriault, PA-C Virginia Thigpen Henry and Sally Tollette Victoria and Robert Tousignant Justine Turner* Ute Turner* Sandra Uhrhammer* Ramon and Karen Urbano Ann-Catrin Van Marian and Paul Ver Wey Richard Vorpe and Evelyn Matteucci Craig Vreeken and Lee Miller Kim and James Waits In memory of Carl Eugene Walden Andrew and Vivian Walker Don and Rhonda Weltz* Doug West Martha S. West Robert and Leslie Westergaard* Nancy and Richard White* Sharon and Steve Wilson Janet G. Winterer Suey Wong* Jessica Woods Jean Wu Timothy and Vicki Yearnshaw Jeffrey and Elaine Yee* Dorothy Yerxa and Michael Reinhart Chelle Yetman Phillip and Iva Yoshimura Phyllis and Darrel Zerger* Marlis and Jack Ziegler Linda and Lou Ziskind Dr. Mark and Wendy Zlotlow And 23 donors who prefer to remain anonymous

Legacy Circle

Thank you to our supporters who have remembered the Mondavi Center in their estate plans. These gifts make a difference for the future of performing arts and we are most grateful.

Wayne and Jacque Bartholomew Karen Broido Ralph and Clairelee Leiser Bulkley John and Lois Crowe Dotty Dixon Nancy DuBois° Jolán Friedhoff and Don Roth Anne Gray

Benjamin and Lynette Hart L. J. Herrig° Mary B. Horton Margaret Hoyt Barbara K . Jackson° Roy and Edith Kanoff° Robert and Barbara Leidigh Yvonne LeMaitre° Jerry and Marguerite Lewis Robert and Betty Liu Don McNary°

Ruth R. Mehlhaff ° Joy Mench and Clive Watson Trust Verne Mendel Kay Resler Hal° and Carol Sconyers Joe and Betty° Tupin Lynn Upchurch And one donor who prefers to remain anonymous

If you have already named the Mondavi Center in your own estate plans, we thank you.

We would love to hear of your giving plans so that we may express our appreciation.

If you are interested in learning about planned giving opportunities, please contact Nancy Petrisko, director of development, 530.754.5420 or npetrisko@ucdavis.edu.

Note: We apologize if we listed your name incorrectly. Please contact the Mondavi Center Development Office at 530.754.5438 to inform us of corrections. * Friends of Mondavi Center

MONDAVI CENTER 2018 –19 |

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†Mondavi Center Advisory Board Member

°In Memoriam