presents
VIANO STRING QUARTET
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 2023 | 2 P.M.
Squitieri Studio Theatre
VIANO STRING QUARTET
Program
String Quartet No. 60 in G Major, Op. 76, No. 1 Joseph Haydn
Allegro con spirito
Adagio sostenuto
Menuet — Presto
Finale — Allegro ma non troppo
String Quartet No. 3 in A Major, Op. 43, No. 3 Robert Schumann
Andante espressivo — Allegro molto moderato
Assai agitato
Adagio molto
Finale — Allegro molto vivace
INTERMISSION
String Quartet No. 1 in D Major, Op. 11 (“Accordian”) Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Moderato e semplice
Andante cantabile
Scherzo — Allegro non tanto
Finale — Allegro giusto — Allegro vivace
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PROGRAM NOTES
String Quartet No. 60 in G Major, Op. 76, No. 1
Joseph Haydn
Born March 31, 1732, in Rohrau; died May 31, 1809, in Vienna
In 1795, Joseph Haydn returned from his second visit to London and settled in Vienna to live out his remaining years as music’s grand old man, the greatest living composer. Mozart, whom he had so greatly admired, had died too young four years before, and Beethoven, who was to be the leader of the next generation (and of the entire next century), was only the musical season’s best debutante. England had showered wealth and honors on Haydn, and he had lingered there for two months after his last concert, before going home to the Continent. By the standards of the time, Haydn was an old man, 63. What no one knew was how different the work of his last years would be from what he had written before. He had written more than a hundred symphonies, but after the dozen masterpieces that he had composed expressly for his London audiences, he never wrote another. Yet with the new knowledge of Handel’s oratorios that Haydn had acquired in London, he modernized and revitalized that form in his own oratorios, The Creation and The Seasons. He also wrote six masses and some other sacred music for the princely Esterházy family for whom he had served as staff conductor and composer for 30 years. Haydn’s greatest music until this time had always been found in his instrumental works, but in his last years, he wrote little except a few string quartets, music that summed up a lifetime of supreme invention.
In 1797, he composed six quartets, Op. 76, works with controlled freedom and rich instrumental texture so modern some historians said they anticipated Brahms. Count Joseph Erdödy, Chamberlain and Privy State Counselor to the Emperor, commissioned the Op. 76 Quartets and, of course, Haydn dedicated them to him. The Erdödys were an important family, noble and musical, related by marriage to Haydn’s former employers, the Esterházys. Count Ladislaus Erdödy is listed among the subscribers to Mozart’s Vienna concerts in l783, and Beethoven dedicated his two Trios, Op. 70 (1808), and two Cello Sonatas, Op. 102 (1815), to his pupil, Countess Maria, wife of Count Peter Erdödy. Haydn began another quartet in 1803 but gave up after two movements, which he allowed to be published in 1806 with the apologetic message, “All my strength is gone; I am old and weak.”
In this first quartet of the series, Haydn appears to be consolidating ground he had newly gained in the string quartet form; here everything is condensed and intensified, and Haydn’s expression has become more direct and personal. The first movement, Allegro con spirito, begins with a cello announcing the opening theme after powerful, triple introductory chords. Until this time, it had been traditional for the first violin to declare the opening theme, although occasionally other voices were substituted. Here Haydn emphasizes all three of the lower voices before allowing the first violin to enter in a contrapuntal line. This movement is very vocal sounding and is built from the quiet and casual cello melody, which the viola answers. After Haydn works with two voices, he brings the other two in to join in a quartet. A deceptively simple melody that sounds like a folk song turns out to
have contrapuntal implications that he exploits with great wit and technical skill. Throughout the movement, Haydn juxtaposes the sonorities of the full quartet against those of the vocal-sounding independent lines of counterpoint, especially dominant in the development section with the music of enormous variety. In contrast with the complex counterpoint, he has created powerful passages that are played in unison and octaves. Sudden changes in dynamic level as well as in texture add power to the expressivity of the music.
The second movement, Adagio sostenuto, features a marvelous song written in a very free rondo form in which modulations alternate with the melody. Arthur Cohn notes, “the manipulation of offbeats” originally gave this quartet a nickname, the Farmyard, which has “fortunately not stayed with the quartet, because of its almost cackling effect.” The third movement, Menuet, a Presto, has two parts. The principal section is actually too quick for a minuet and is really almost a scherzo, anticipating the music of Beethoven, with its witty irregular phrases, instead of the usual courtly minuet found in this position. The contrasting trio section has a calmer pace and is a ländler, a peasant dance that Haydn often used in other quartets and in his symphonies, with accompanying guitar-like plucked chords. The last movement, Finale — Allegro ma non troppo, has a dominating triplet rhythm. This movement begins in G minor, but Haydn does not write it in the minor tonality to alter the dominant mood of the composition; rather, in the second half of the movement, he returns to the major mode so that the quartet begins and ends in the same key. Although during Haydn’s time, it was customary to end a quartet in a major key if the first movement began in the minor, here Haydn is playing with that tradition. He sets contrapuntal textures in contrast with strong unisons, and as the music flashes by, powerful rhythmic figures turn into simple melodies. Perhaps he is trying to make the listener aware of the fresh coloration of the final tonality when the main theme returns over a pizzicato accompaniment. The quartet ends with the same three chords that had begun it.
String Quartet No. 3 in A Major, Op. 41, No. 3
Robert Schumann
Born June 8, 1810, in Zwickau; died July 29, 1856, in Endenich
Robert Schumann’s father was a small-town bookseller who encouraged his son’s inclination toward the arts. At the age of 6, the boy began to play the piano and compose. By the time he was 14, he had begun to write poetry, and some of his works had been published. At 18, he entered Leipzig University as a law student, but the call of music was too strong for him to resist, and in his third year, he abandoned the university, determined to become a great pianist. When his hand was permanently injured from the too strenuous and incorrect use of it, he gave up the hope of a career as a performer, turned to composition, and wrote several brilliant collections of short, descriptive, and atmospheric piano pieces that established his position as Germany’s leading composer.
In 1838, Schumann wrote to Clara Wieck, who was later to be his wife, “The piano has become too limited for me.” He confided that he had begun working on ideas for string quartets. In 1839, he mentioned quartet writing again in letters to a friend, adding that he was “living through some of Beethoven’s last quartets.” In 1840, the year of his marriage, he wrote almost nothing but songs,
more than 130 of them, in a great outpouring of love. His attention was diverted to the orchestra in 1841 when he wrote four symphonic compositions and the first movement of his Piano Concerto. In 1842, he finally put other work aside to concentrate on chamber music. That April, he ordered scores of all the Mozart and Beethoven quartets available and then studied them for two months. In a furious burst of creative energy between June and October, he composed three string quartets, a piano quartet, and a piano quintet.
The quartets are Schumann’s only chamber music without a piano. He finished the first one on June 24th and the second on July 5th. By this time, the third quartet must have been very nearly fully formed in his mind; it took only a few days after this for him to set it down on paper. On July 22nd, the quartet was complete. On September 13th, Clara’s 23rd birthday, four friends came to the Schumann home in Leipzig to play through the set of three quartets. Ferdinand David, the concertmaster of the Gewandhaus (“Draper’s Hall”) Orchestra, for whom Mendelssohn would later compose his Violin Concerto, took the first violin part. At David’s house, on September 29th, the three quartets were repeated for a little audience of friends, Mendelssohn among them. After each reading, Schumann made minor revisions, and in February 1843, the quartets were published with a dedication to Mendelssohn. Ten years later, Schumann made a gift of the sketches for these works to his young disciple, the 20-yearold Johannes Brahms, who left them, upon his death, to Joseph Joachim, the great violinist who had introduced him to Schumann.
Quartet No. 3 is the largest of the three and, for many listeners, the most accomplished. It opens with a few, slow introductory measures, Andante espressivo, in which a vaguely questioning fragment of a melody is played three times and then is answered in the main section of the movement, Allegro molto moderato. The falling two-note figure from the introduction is an important element of the new melodic material here. It becomes one of the most important musical ideas discussed at length in the course of the movement’s development. Next comes a fast movement, Assai agitato, with the function of a scherzo but in the form of a theme, variations, and coda. The subject, first heard restlessly syncopated, is not plainly stated until the slow contrapuntal variation. The slow movement, Adagio molto, is one of Schumann’s tender, passionate expressions, an extended song heard in alternation with contrasting material. The Finale, Allegro molto vivace, is a vigorous, free rondo.
String Quartet No. 1 in D Major, Op. 11 (“Accordion”)
Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Born May 7, 1840, in Votkinsk; died November 6, 1893, in Saint Petersburg
As a young man, Tchaikovsky seemed to be destined for an undistinguished career as a low-level bureaucrat; he did not start to study music seriously until he was 21 years old. Two years later, Nicolai Rubinstein helped find him some beginning pupils, so that he could devote his full time to music, and by 1866, he was well enough trained to join the faculty of the new Conservatory that Rubinstein started in Moscow. Before long, he was also working on such large-
scale compositions as his first symphony, an opera, a piano sonata, and the first version of Romeo and Juliet
After a very expensive trip to Western Europe in 1870, Tchaikovsky decided to take Rubinstein’s suggestion that he try to make some money by giving a concert of his own music. He engaged some locally popular singers to perform several short works, but decided that the instrumental music would be represented by a string quartet that he would write for the occasion since he could not afford to engage an orchestra.
He went to work immediately on this, the first string quartet he would write, completing it in February 1871. At the March 28th concert, it was performed in public for the first time by four of the composer’s colleagues on the conservatory faculty. The concert’s greatest success, however, was in public relations rather than in music. Ivan Turgenev, who was considered to be one of the greatest Russian writers, although he had lived abroad during much of his adult life, made an appearance at the concert. He arrived too late to hear the quartet, but it was said that he had come because of Tchaikovsky’s high reputation in the West. The quartet later had another famous literary admirer in Leo Tolstoy, who sat beside the composer at a concert performance given in 1877. “Probably never in my life as a musician,” Tchaikovsky reported, “have I felt so flattered and so proud of my work as when Tolstoy, sitting beside me and listening to the Andante, burst into tears.” Later, alas, the composer was perturbed to discover that the great Tolstoy reportedly had terrible taste in music.
Interest in this quartet has long centered on the almost too-popular slow movement, which now exists in hundreds and hundreds of versions. Its main theme is a Russian or Ukrainian folk song that Tchaikovsky had first noted during the summer of 1869 when he heard it sung by a workman at the country estate of a relative. The original words are said to have begun, “Vanya is sitting and smoking.” In some versions, he is said to be drinking. In either case, it was an activity that hardly seems to be as highly charged with emotion as it is given in Tchaikovsky’s version of it. Later, Tchaikovsky’s benefactress, Nadezhada von Meck, with whom he carried on a strictly epistolary intimacy, wrote that it affected her as a glass of strong drink might, and when she played it on the piano, “at the end, this music sent a shiver through me from head to foot.”
Elsewhere in the quartet, Tchaikovsky was striving to write in the spirit of his idols, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schumann, the romantic Classicists, and the classical Romantics. The first movement, Moderato e semplice (“moderate and simple”), runs its course with two themes whose pulses are so flexible that one quickly loses track of meter and rhythm. The themes are developed with power and skill and then brought back again.
The second movement is the famous Andante cantabile already mentioned. Its contrasting second theme with the pizzicato accompaniment is one of Tchaikovsky’s greatest inventions. Next comes a lively Scherzo, Allegro non tanto, with a contrasting central section; the quartet closes with a grand Finale, Allegro giusto, which is a classical rondo-sonata combination using original tunes in folk character to make its way to the grand closing coda, Allegro vivace
— Program notes © Susan Halpern, 2023
VIANO STRING QUARTET
Praised for their “virtuosity, visceral expression, and rare unity of intention” (Boston Globe), the Viano String Quartet are First Prize winners of the 2019 Banff International String Quartet Competition. Formed in 2015 at the Colburn Conservatory of Music in Los Angeles, where they were Ensemble-in-Residence through the 2020-21 season, the quartet has performed in venues such as Wigmore Hall, Place Flagey, Konzerthaus Berlin, and Segerstrom Center for the Arts. The quartet has been named the Nina von Maltzahn String Quartet-inResidence at the Curtis Institute of Music for 2021-22 and 2022-23 seasons.
Summer of 2022 brought re-invitations to Great Lakes and Rockport Music Festivals, as well as performances at Chamber Music Northwest (Protégé Project three-week residency), Tannery Pond under the auspice of Capitol Region Classical, Victoria Summer Music Festival, Bard Music Festival finished with a residency at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. In the fall Viano made their Lucerne Festival and Wigmore Hall debuts followed by performances in Oklahoma, California, Texas, Florida, Minnesota, New Mexico, New York, Delaware, Tennessee, Washington, D.C., and Canada. March 2023 will mark the beginning of their three-year residency with Music in the Morning in Vancouver where they will create programming to include artist collaborations, extensive community engagement, and master classes.
As part of the Banff International String Quartet Competition prize, the quartet is in residence at the Meadows School of Music at Southern Methodist University through the 2022-23 season. For two weeks each semester, they will perform side by side concerts, coach chamber ensembles, and initiate projects within the SMU community. Recent highlights include performances on three continents, including debuts in Berlin, Paris, Bremen, Brussels, Vancouver, and Beijing, among other cities. They have collaborated with world-class musicians such as pianists Emanuel Ax, Marc-André Hamelin, and Elisso Virsaladze; violists Paul Coletti and Paul Neubauer; violinist Noah Bendix-Balgley; vocalist Hila Plitmann; and clarinetist David Shifrin.
The quartet achieved incredible success in their formative years, with an unbroken streak of top prizes. In addition to their career-defining achievement at the 2019 Banff International String Quartet Competition, where they were among the youngest First Prize winners in history, they also received the Grand Prize at the 2019 ENKOR International Music Competition and Second Prize at the 2019 Yellow Springs Chamber Music Competition. At the 2018 Wigmore Hall International String Quartet Competition they received Third Prize, the Haydn Prize for the best performance of a Haydn quartet, and the Sidney Griller Award for the best performance of the compulsory work, Thomas Ades’ The Four Quarters. They received the Silver Medal at the 2018 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition and Third Prize at the 9th Osaka International Chamber Music Competition in 2017.
Since the Covid-19 pandemic started, the Viano String Quartet actively presented virtual and socially distanced live concerts for various organizations, including the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, Friends of Chamber Music
of Troy, Salt Lake Chamber Music Society, Dallas Chamber Music Society, Schneider Series at The New School, and the Banff International String Quartet Festival. With their colleagues in the Calidore String Quartet, they presented a movement of the Mendelssohn Octet while distanced across countries in a film project, The Way Forward. Committed to engaging with communities outside the concert hall, the Viano String Quartet has given presentations for school children and students of all ages through residencies in Bellingham, Washington—the Play It Forward Residency, a collaboration between the Bellingham Festival of Music and the Whatcom Symphony to reach school children in the northern Washington State area—Northern Michigan University, and the Santa Monica Conservatory. In 2019 they gave multiple performances of Over the Top, a Musical Encounter Interactive presentation they scripted, developed and performed at the Colburn School for inner city school children.
The Vianos currently work primarily with faculty members of the Curtis Institute of Music, including the Dover Quartet, Shmuel Ashkenasi, Steven Tenenbom, and Peter Wiley. Their past mentors include Colburn Conservatory of Music faculty members Martin Beaver, Scott St. John, Clive Greensmith, Paul Coletti, and Fabio Bidini. They have received coachings from artists such as David Finckel, Gary Hoffman, Arnold Steinhardt, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, and members of the Alban Berg, Brentano, Emerson, Miró, Shanghai, St. Lawrence, and Takács String Quartets. They have attended the Ravinia Steans Chamber Music Institute, the St. Lawrence String Quartet Seminar, the Festival d’Aix en Provence, the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, and the McGill International String Quartet Academy.
The name “Viano” was created to describe the four individual instruments in a string quartet interacting as one. Each of the four instruments begins with the letter “v,” and like a piano, all four string instruments together play both harmony and melody, creating a unified instrument called the “Viano.”
Photo © Jeff Fasano
