Rolston String Quartet
Tuesday, December 13, 2022 | 7:30 pm Morse Recital Hall in Sprague Memorial Hall
David Shifrin, artistic director Robert Blocker, DeanJoseph Haydn 1732–1809
Leoš Janáček 1854–1928
ProgramString Quartet in G major, Op. 33, No. 5 I. Vivace assai II. Largo cantabile III. Scherzo. Allegro IV. Finale. Allegretto – Presto
String Quartet No. 1, JW vii/8, “Kreutzer Sonata” I. Adagio con moto II. Con moto III. Con moto – Vivace – Andante – Tempo I IV. Con moto intermission
Ludwig van Beethoven 1770–1827
String Quartet No. 16 in F major, Op. 135 I. Allegretto II. Vivace III. Lento assai, cantante e tranquillo IV. Grave, ma non troppo tratto – Allegro
As a courtesy to others, please silence all devices. Photography and recording of any kind is strictly prohibited. Please do not leave the hall during musical selections. Thank you.
Artist Profile
Rolston String Quartet
Luri Lee, violin Jason Issokson, violin Hezekiah Leung, viola Peter Eom, cello
With their debut recording, Souvenirs, recently named BBC Music Magazine Recording of the Year, Canada’s Rolston String Quartet continues to receive acclamation and recognition for their musical excellence. As the 2018 recipient and first international ensemble chosen for the prestigious Cleveland Quartet Award from Chamber Music America, their accolades and awards precede them. In 2016, a monumental year, they won First Prize at the 12th Banff International String Quartet Competition, Grand Prize at the 31st Chamber Music Yellow Springs Competition, and Astral’s National Auditions.
Recent highlights include debut performances at Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall, The Freer Gallery, and Chamber Music Houston, two major Canadian tours under the Prairie Debut and Debut Atlantic touring networks, and three European tours with dates in Leipzig, Berlin, Lucerne, Heidelberg, Barcelona, and Graz among others. Their 2019–20 season includes concerts at UCLA’s Herb Alpert School of Music, Texas Performing Arts, Chamber Music Northwest, and Calgary Pro Musica; the chamber music societies of Detroit, Fort Worth, Kansas City, Philadelphia, and Vancouver; and the Louvre Museum. As Süddeutsche Zeitung states, “they showed such delicacy, slender elasticity, impeccable intonation, and such eminent sense of tonal balance... This is a new bright
star on the truly not empty string quartet sky of our day.”
Notable collaborations include performances with renowned artists Janina Fialkowska, Gary Hoffman, Nobuko Imai, Miguel da Silva, and David Shifrin, as well as the St. Lawrence, and Dover Quartets. The quartet are associated artists at the Queen Elizabeth Music Chapel, and completed a two-year term as the Yale School of Music’s fellowship quartet-in-residence in spring 2019. Previously, they were the graduate quartet-inresidence at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music. Keeping in the teaching tradition, they have taught at the Yale School of Music, University of Toronto, and the Bowdoin International Music Festival, among others. Primary mentors include the Brentano Quartet, James Dunham, Norman Fischer, and Kenneth Goldsmith, and the quartet has received additional guidance from the St. Lawrence String Quartet, Miguel da Silva, and Alastair Tait.
The Rolston String Quartet was formed in the summer of 2013 at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity’s Chamber Music Residency. They take their name from Canadian violinist Thomas Rolston, founder and long-time director of the Music and Sound Programs at the Banff Centre. The original members are all graduates of The Glenn Gould School (GGS), and it was at the GGS that they founded their passion for chamber music and, under the guidance of Barry Shiffman, focused their artistic growth and ensemble playing. In addition, Ms. Lee was an alumna of The Rebanks Family Fellowship and International Performance Residency Program at the GGS.
Artist Profile cont.
Program Notes
Luri Lee plays a Carlo Tononi violin, generously on loan from Shauna Rolston Shaw. The Rolston String Quartet performs on the Eugène Ysaÿe quartet of instruments. The set was made by Samuel Zygmuntowicz, and is on generous loan from the El Pasito Association. The Rolston String Quartet is endorsed by Jargar Strings of Denmark.
» rolstonstrinqquartet.com
String Quartet in G major haydn
Patrick Campbell Jankowski
Upon their publication, Haydn said of his Op. 33 quartets that they were written in a manner that was “new and special.” Although this may have been something of a marketing tactic, there is some element of truth to it. Ten years had passed since his previous quartets, and in the interim the composer had devoted a great deal of attention to comedic opera. These pieces are generally more lighthearted in nature, and each has a scherzo in place of a minuet.
The fifth has earned the nickname “How do you do?” in reference to the brief fournote motive that bookends its first movement. That little motive weaves its way into the melodic and accompanying material throughout this lively opener. The Adagio Cantabile, in a minor mode, imparts a touch of intensity, with moments of dramatic pause, contrasting dynamics, and extreme juxtapositions of delicacy and forcefulness. The scherzo is a topsy-turvy movement with yet more incidents of contrast and surprising starts and stops, though now in the service of playfulness rather than melodrama. The finale is a set of variations on a bouncing triple-meter theme. Haydn’s interplay of instrumental voices is particular interesting in this movement, as he highlights the viola and cello at times, or crafts unique pairings of voices. The pace quickens at the end, leading to a thrilling conclusion.
String Quartet No. 1, “Kreutzer Sonata” janáček
Liam VineyJanáček’s first string quartet was inspired by Leo Tolstoy’s tragic tale of a woman disappointed in marriage and betrayed by her lover. “I had in mind a miserable woman, suffering, beaten, wretched, like the great Russian author Tolstoy wrote about in his Kreutzer Sonata. So wrote the 69-year-old Janáček in a 1924 letter to Kamila Stolsslova, a young married woman 38 years his junior. She had become the muse that inspired many of his semi-autobiographical later compositions. Indeed his second quartet, “Intimate Letters,” was written explicitly as a “labor of love” and is literally influenced by events in their relationship. The First Quartet is not directly concerned with Janáček’s personal life. However, the new relationship with the young Madame Stosslova may have been the catalyst that ignited the desire to respond so passionately to Tolstoy’s story. Having read the novel, Janáček was devastated by the unfaithful wife’s murder at the hands of her jealous husband, and he furiously completed his quartet over a nine-day period in 1923. The work was commissioned by the Bohemian Quartet, and according to the second violinist (the composer Josef Suk), Janáček intended the work to represent a sort of musical protest, condemning any form of despotic male behavior towards women. As such, the quartet remains programmatic, but is more of a psychological response to Tolstoy’s novel than a bar by bar depiction of the plot. Nevertheless, the essential shape of the story can be readily discerned.
The first movement establishes the dramatic foundation by painting a portrait of the heroine, focusing on “compassion for the miserable, prostrate female being.” The very opening “sigh” is a motive that not only signifies the pathos of our heroine, but also contains the pitch cell that generates material for the entire movement. The outline of a sonata form can be traced throughout, but not in the syntax of the tonal tradition (i.e. specific key relationships, balanced phrasing and goal-oriented harmonic progressions). Rather it is a mold for Janáček’s thematic narrative. The “recapitulation” is perhaps better described as an emotionally-charged memento of the opening than an event of great formal significance. The second movement develops the drama by introducing the seducer, portrayed by a buoyantly foppish variant of the very opening motive from the first movement.
Scurrying figuration and chilling sul ponticello passages hint of the impending tragedy, and the first admissions of love are heard. The third movement opens with a “light and timid” duet between violin and cello, but this movement ultimately represents the crisis. The opening melody, especially in its second statement, is reminiscent of the beautiful second theme from the first movement of Beethoven’s “Kreutzer” Sonata (which had, of course, inspired Tolstoy in turn). Yet this very beauty serves to unleash the passions of our protagonists, including the jealous husband. Frenzied interruptions of wild figuration accumulate until the heroine pleads for compassion and finally retreats into an expanded vision of the love theme from the opening. The fourth movement opens with the tormented heroine’s
Program Notes cont.
monologue, recalling the sighing motive from the first movement. This motive also provides the work’s climax. But rather than end the piece with the terrible deed, and deny the very existence of love as does Tolstoy in the Kreutzer Sonata, Janáček seeks to refute Tolstoy’s position and deviate from the great author’s ultimate message. Ironically, while Tolstoy’s novel blames music for encouraging adultery, and ascribes to it all manner of “the most immoral effects,” Janáček uses music instead as a source of catharsis and a symbol of hope for love and the spirit of humanity.
String Quartet No. 16 in F major beethoven Patrick Campbell Jankowski
The Op. 135 quartet would become the final completed work that Beethoven would write before his death in 1827. Unlike the other works that would come to be grouped together as “The Late Quartets,” this one is notably less “weighty” in a number of ways. While its siblings are grand in scale, notably unorthodox in form, and often intense in tone, this one is fairly lighthearted in nature. In an interesting parallel to Haydn’s “How do you do?” quartet, this one likewise begins with a brief four-note motif in the viola, followed by a somewhat cheeky response in the first violin. With its frequent back-and-forth trading of gestures, this Allegretto in Sonata Form is conversational in style and harkens back strongly to the light and elegant quartets of Haydn, particularly his Op. 33 set. A brisk scherzo follows, with a theme that trots along somewhat in the manner of a hunting horn call. The wellknown Lento assai, with its hymn-like style and serious tone, was referred to by the composer in his first sketches as a “sweet song of calm or peace.” Though it contains moments of dissonance and intensity throughout its handful of variations, the movement is almost universally gentle and prayer-like. Among the most cryptic gestures we’ve found in Beethoven’s works can be seen in the final movement, which he called “the difficult resolution.” Its somber opening contains the question “Muss es sein” or “Must it be?” and the ensuing allegro is labeled “Es muss sein!” or “It must be!” The ambiguity of these statements remain unresolved, though we can accept it as perhaps just that: a note of acceptance, whatever that means.
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