|
Our 2011-2012 Past Seasons: 2010--2011 |
PROGRAM NOTESThis quartet begins with a movement that has often been cited as exemplifying the Sturm und Drang in music. Although the opening employs a dark F minor, the sorrowful mood is relieved by occasional moves to the major mode. Such contrasting tonal shades will eventually give the arrival of F major in the third movement an almost inexpressible poignancy. The second movement, as in the opening, blends major and minor to create an unsettling mixture of emotional effects. The trio provides the work's first sustained exploration of the brighter color of F major, but the return of the minuet reintroduces the shadows of the original key. The third movement, marked Adagio, establishes a gentle pastoral mood through the use of a siciliano dance rhythm. After so much music in the minor, the use of F major here creates an extraordinarily touching atmosphere. This seemingly guileless music is cast in sonata form, but it also uses procedures clearly derived from the model of the theme with variations. Although it maintains a peaceful surface, this movement introduces harmonic colors of a surprising richness. The overall impression, however, is one of undisturbed simplicity. This cannot be said of the finale, which presents a fugue of overwhelming sophistication. Haydn uses two subjects, one of which was extremely common in eighteenth-century contrapuntal writing: Bach used it in the Well-Tempered Clavier, Handel used it in Messiah, and Mozart would use it in his Requiem. Haydn's contribution to the career of this theme is one of the most complex, as it thoroughly explores its canonic possibilities. The use of fugue---seemingly one of the most intellectual and rule-bound musical forms---again argues against this work as an exemplification of the flawless Sturm und Drang. GOLIJOV. Yiddishbbuk (1992)Born in La Plata, Argentina, to a family of Eastern European Jewish heritage, Osvaldo Golijov studied composition and piano before moving to Israel in 1983. In 1986, he came to the United States, studied with George Crumb and earned his Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania. Since 1991, Mr. Golijov has taught at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, and also serves on the faculties of the Boston Conservatory and at the Tanglewood Music Center. About "Yiddishbbuk", Mr. Golijov has written: "A broken song played on a shattered cymbalon (a large dulcimer used by Hungarian gypsies)." Thus, writes Kafka, begins "Yiddishbbuk," a collection of apocryphal psalms which he read while living in Prague's Street of the Alchemists. The only remnants of the collection are a few verses interspersed among the entries of Kafka's notebooks, and the last lines are also quoted in a letter to Milena: "No one sings as purely as those who are in the deepest hell. Theirs is the song which we confused with that of the angels." Written in Hebrew characters and surrounded with musical notation, marks similar to those of the genuine texts, the psalms' only other reference to their music is "In the mode of the Babylonic Lamentations." Based on these vestiges, these inscriptions for string quartet are an attempt to reconstruct that music. The movements of the piece bear the initials of the five people commemorated in the work. The first movement remembers three children interned by the Nazis at the Terezín concentration camp: Doris Weiserová (1932-1944), Frantisek Bass (1930-1944), and Tomás Kauders (1934-1943). Their poems and drawings appear in the book "I never saw another butterfly," published by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. The second movement bears the initials of the writer Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904-1991), and the last movement the initials of Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990). Written under a 1990 Fromm Commission from Tanglewood, "Yiddishbbuk" premiered there in 1992, and was awarded the first prize in the Kennedy Center's Friedheim Awards in 1993. BEETHOVEN. String Quartet in E-flat Major, Opus 127 Beethoven's Opus 127 quartet was the first of the late quartets commissioned by Prince Galitzen. Its premiere performance by the Schuppanzigh Quartet on March 6, 1825 was not a success. This may have been due to the difficulty of the work itself or to the players' lack of adequate preparation for such an undertaking (having received the score very late) or a combination of both factors. The first violinist, Ignaz Schuppanzigh wanted an opportunity to play the work again, but Beethoven instead gave it to Joseph Bohm who had been the leader of the Quartet Concerts in Vienna and was also the teacher of the great violinist Joseph Joachim. The initial performance of Opus 127 under Bohm's leadership was such a success that it led to a total of nine performances of the work - Beethoven was delighted. The Quartet's first movement is unusually brief and concise. It consists, in the main, of a short introduction of heavily accented chords (Maestoso) followed by a lovely melody. The movement is full of sudden dynamic shifts, incursions to remote keys, and employment of the first violin and cello in their extreme registers. The second movement, Adagio ma non troppo e molto cantabile is the heart of the work. It is more than twice as long as any of the other movements and consists of a theme with five free variations. Of this movement Robert Schumann said, "One seems to have lingered not fifteen short minutes but an eternity." It is somewhat reminiscent of the lovely third movement of the Ninth Symphony, Op. 125. The Scherzando vivace is one of Beethoven's movements based on a tiny rhythmic cell that seems to be self-propelled through musical space-time. The last movement is marked Finale with the tempo left to the discretion of the players. It has a Haydnesque quality to it, except for the unusual coda in which Beethoven changes key, meter and tempo.
|