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PROGRAM NOTESThe program at the first performance in Vienna on April 6, 1797, of Beethoven's just completed Op. 16 read, "A Quintet for the Fortepiano and Four Wind Instruments." Yet, when the work was actually published in 1801, it appeared both as a quintet for piano and winds (oboe, clarinet, French horn, and bassoon) and as a quartet for piano and strings (violin, viola, and cello). Both versions had the same opus number and were nearly identical, given the different number and capabilities of the instruments. Having been inspired by Mozart's highly successful and delightful Quintet in E Flat (K. 452), written a little more than a decade before, it is not surprising that Beethoven chose the quintet form. The string transcription, it is believed, was probably a way to make the music more available to a wider public, including the many amateur piano and string groups that were active in Vienna at that time. The quartet opens with a slow, dignified, and rather long introduction in the pompous style and dotted (long-short) rhythm of late seventeenth-century French overtures. The following Allegro strips away any hints of pretentiousness as the three main themes, all characterized by a simple, relaxed charm, are introduced one after another. Beethoven underscores the lightness of mood by playfully inserting a false recapitulation in the wrong key, before returning the themes in the proper and expected way. Then, in the same frisky manner, he omits the second part of the first subject until after a short, written-out piano cadenza is played near the end of the recapitulation. The principal theme of the Andante cantabile is a long phrased melody, introduced by the piano and then taken up by the others. After a contrasting episode in minor the melody returns, somewhat embellished and with additional countermelodies. This is followed by another minor-key interlude, after which the main melody returns, further ornamented, and with an even richer contrapuntal texture. A coda, with scale fragments in contrary motion between the piano and other instruments, brings the movement to a quiet close. Beethoven calls the last movement a Rondo, which is usually described as three repetitions of a theme separated by contrasting episodes; it can be diagramed as A-B-A-C-A, where A is the theme, and B and C are the contrasts. In this movement, though, the C section is really a development of A, and with the B section brought back at the end, the organization comes closer to the sonata form, with its A-B development A-B form. The writing throughout is witty and high-spirited. At one performance, Beethoven jestingly extended to considerable length the very short piano cadenza that comes just before the first return of A -- to his great delight and to the other performers' considerable discomfort. But is must be added that, when he heard his pupil Carl Czerny make a few minor alterations in the part, such as doubling some of the piano notes, Beethoven scolded him for taking liberties!
William Turner Walton, one of the most significant figures in British music between Ralph Vaughan Williams and Benjamin Britten, was born on 29 March 1902, in the industrial Lancashire town of Oldham. His father was the director of the local church choir, and by participation therein Walton became familiar with much of the standard choral repertoire, including Haydn's Creation and Handel's Messiah. At the age of ten, Walton was accepted as a chorister of Christ Church Cathedral at Oxford University. While at Oxford, both as chorister and later as an undergraduate student, Walton familiarized himself with the masters of contemporary music: Stravinsky (especially Le sacre du printemps and Petrouchka), Bartók, Prokofiev, Strauss, Holst, Schoenberg, and Satie. He spent hours at Oxford's music library, studying new music scores, much to the detriment of his other studies. Hugh Allen, the Church organist, and Thomas Strong, the Dean of Christ Church, recognized a strong talent in Walton's few compositions of this period. Indeed, Hubert Parry and Ralph Vaughan Williams both knew and appreciated Walton's early works. Walton also frequented the concerts of the Hallé Orchestra in Manchester, and visits to London were not uncommon. There, he first heard Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov and Rimsky-Korsakov's Le coq d'or, both of which the young student enjoyed. Walton also arranged concerts with his Oxford friend, the poet Sacheverell Sitwell. In 1918, the composer began this piano quartet, his first major work. Despite his family's financial sacrifices, Walton did not get a degree from Oxford. When he left the university in 1920, Sitwell and his siblings (Osbert and Edith) invited him to lodge with them as an "adopted, or elected, brother." Walton accepted, and as a result met and befriended some of the most important musicians of the time: Ernest Ansermet, Edward Dent, Ferruccio Busoni, Peter Warlock, Spike Hughes, Frederick Delius, Angus Morrison, Bernard van Dieren, and Constant Lambert, who grew to be Walton's close friend. The Sitwells also introduced him to literary figures such as T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. With the Ballets Russes in London, Walton also knew much of the music associated with Diaghilev and his entourage: Stravinsky's L'histoire du soldat, Satie's Parade, Ravel's Daphnis et Chloé, and works by Debussy and Les Six. Many of these compositions proved to be great influences on his own output. The Piano Quartet was performed in Salzburg in 1923, as part of the International Society for Contemporary Music's annual concerts, when he met Alban Berg and Schoenberg. The piece is a youthful and exuberant work, full of both beautiful lyric writing and tremendous rhythmic drive. These elements appear almost in alternation, with the first and third movements revealing the influence of the British pastoral style pioneered by Vaughan Williams, and the 2nd and 4th revealing the influence of both Stravinsky and occasionally Ravel. The work won a Carnegie Award, and shows a bold originality of conception, and the beginnings of Walton's very personal use of ambiguous tonal language, which became a hallmark of his mature style.
Brahms first worked on the C minor piano quartet from 1854 to 1856, a period of great strain and anxiety for the young composer. With his benefactor and dear friend Robert Schumann suffering with severe mental illness, Brahms found himself torn between fidelity to Robert and deep affection for Clara, Schumann's wife. When Robert was hospitalized, Brahms rushed to Düsseldorf to help Clara and her seven children through those difficult days. During that period Brahms wrote to her, "Would to God that I were allowed this day ... to repeat to you with my own lips that I am dying for love of you." He remained with her only until Schumann died in July 1856. Many of the complex and turbulent emotions Brahms was suffering seem to have flowed into the piano quartet. When Brahms played through the piece, though, he was not pleased and set it aside for further work. Seventeen years later, in 1873, Brahms finally returned to the quartet. He transposed the key to C minor, from the original C-sharp minor, thus making the parts easier for the string players. Of the original work, he kept the third movement intact, revised the first, and composed entirely new second and fourth movements. The recast version was completed during a summer holiday near Heidelberg in 1875, some twenty years after its original conception, but the feeling tone remained the same. "You may place a picture on the title page," he wrote to the publisher when submitting the manuscript, "namely a head -- with a pistol in front of it. This will give you some idea of the music. I shall send you a photograph of myself for the purpose. Blue coat, yellow breeches, and top-boots would do well, as you seem to like color printing." Because the description fits Werther, the morbidly sentimental hero of Goethe's novel The Sorrows of Young Werther, who kills himself for the unrequited love of his friend's wife, the quartet acquired the subtitle "Werther." The tragic first movement of the C-minor piano quartet is most strongly felt in the first movement. The opening subject grows from a descending minor second, a musical sigh of pain. The gloom is relieved somewhat by the lyrical second theme in the major mode, but its descending melodic line casts a slight pall. Brahms immediately varies this theme before developing both themes and bringing them back for the recapitulation. The theme of the nervous and intense Scherzo is heard in the piano; occasional missed accents trip up the forward-rushing notes. After a brief pause, the strings state the second theme, which starts sedately enough, but immediately develops a sort of musical twitch. A calmer interlude in major serves as the contrasting trio before the return of the Scherzo proper. The emotional center of the entire quartet, and the putative favorite of Brahms, is the Andante. To many listeners, it is a lovely, deeply sentimental love song. Biographer Richard Specht considers the opening cello melody to be Brahms's reluctant farewell to Clara, a pained acknowledgement of their doomed relationship. The tender syncopated second theme adds a beguiling beauty to this exquisite movement. The essential texture of the Finale is fabricated from the strings spinning out expansive, cantabile melodies, while the piano skitters along in a rushing, perpetual motion of rapid figurations. Charm and warmth prevail, but never without a tinge of sadness. Of especial interest are the two chorale-like sections that seem to recall a religious hymn.
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