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Our 2011-2012 Past Seasons: 2010--2011 |
PROGRAM NOTESThe six quartets of Haydn's Opus 33 may have more nicknames than any other set of quartets. They are often referred to as the "Russian" quartets, so named because Haydn dedicated them to Grand Duke Paul of Russia, and their first performances took place in the Vienna apartments of the Duke's wife. They are also commonly known as the Gli Scherzi, because they are the first chamber works in which Haydn substituted scherzi for the traditional minuet movements. Occasionally they are called the "Maiden" or the "Jungfernquartette", because a drawing of an attractive young woman appeared on the title page of an early edition.
Whatever we may call them, these quartets were, Charles Rosen notes in The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, "revolutionary quartets." The quartets are remarkably concise: thematic material is frequently pared to a minimum, accompaniment and melody are often identical, interchangeable, or easily transformed from one to the other, and transitional figures and phrases are eliminated almost completely. Rosen refers to the new style as an integrated texture in which linear vitality is present in every instrumental part, where the former distinctions between melody and obvious accompaniment disappear. Haydn wrote that these quartets were written in "an entirely new and special style." One critic observes that the way in which the Opus 33 quartets "play with the conventions of genre and musical procedure is of unprecedented sophistication; in thus being 'music about music,' these quartets were arguably the first modern works." The appearance of Opus 33 in 1781 was the first major event of what was to become a crucial decade for the Viennese string quartet as Mozart and other composers joined Haydn in cultivating the genre. Haydn's Opus 33 had an important impact on Mozart, who, between 1782 and 1785, composed six magnificent quartets and dedicated them to Haydn. The first movement of the sixth quartet of Opus 33 illustrates Haydn's "entirely new and special style" in its thematic transformations; its melodic subjects are often introduced and freely imitated by the other instruments. The Andante, in three-part ABA form, is in a minor key; the second violin and viola introduce its solemn melody against a long, sustained note in the first violin. The Scherzo exhibits a hardy, peasant-like vigor with its offbeat accents; the cello's graceful melody signals the contrasting middle section; the jolly scherzo returns to round out the movement. The Finale, although its material is weighty and provides balance to the preceding movements, ends the quartet on a cheerful note. It opens with sharply contrasted themes: the first is a lilting tune in the major key; the second, in the minor, spins out an intricately contrapuntal web in all four instruments. Three variations on these two themes follow before the movement comes to its happy conclusion.
SHOSTAKOVICH. String Quartet No. 10, in A flat Major, Opus 118 Shostakovich was born into a cultured family in St. Petersburg in 1906. He received his early musical training from his mother, who was a professional pianist. At the age of 13 he entered the Petrograd Conservatory, studying piano and composition, and graduated from the conservatory in 1926. Shostakovich was one of the preeminent composers of the Soviet era in Russia. His compositions ranged from symphonic and other works for orchestra, stage and dramatic music, piano music, vocal works to chamber music. His compositions were characterized by dissonant harmonies and intricate counterpoint, but are largely tonal in an era when atonality and serialism were prevalent among European composers. Despite living a non-political life Shostakovich was in and out of favor with Soviet authorities throughout his musical life, receiving such honors as the Stalin Prize, the Order of Lenin, Hero of Socialist Labor, People's Artist of the U.S.S.R. and Order of the October Revolution, and alternatively being criticized for bourgeois decadence and, along with Prokofiev and other Russian composers, accused by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of formalist perversions and antidemocratic tendencies, "alien to the Soviet people and its artistic tastes". It is difficult to fathom by what artistic criteria the Soviet authorities were judging these works, but somehow the ideology of dialectical materialism governed aesthetics. Meanwhile, Hitler denounced the works of Shostakovich and his Russian contemporaries as decadent Bolshevism. Perhaps criticism from this quarter helped reestablish good relations of Shostakovich and other Russian composers with the Soviet regime. Sadly, in the world or western music no parallel honors--Champion of Monopolistic Capitalism, Idol of the Market Economy, or Industrialist's Star of Supply and Demand--were established to bestow upon such musical worthies as Gershwin, Copeland or Ives. The String Quartet No. 10 was one of the 15 string quartets composed by Shostakovich between 1938 and 1974. It was dedicated to Moisei Vainberg, a close friend and composer, and given its premier in Moscow on November 20, 1964 by the Beethoven String Quartet of Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). The first movement of this quartet serves as a quiet, dark, somber and mysterious prelude to the furious jabbing, throbbing and relentless forte pulsations of the second. The Adagio that follows is a passacaglia, a form consisting of continuous variations over a repeated short melody, played here mostly by the cello overlaid by a rich, melodic line interwoven over the bass figure by the first violin with the inner instruments filling in the harmonies. The final movement is linked to the Adagio by sustained notes in the cello and first violin, after which the viola states the first theme of the movement, a dance-like tune with characteristic repeated rhythms, and later expresses a second broader theme. Thereafter, fragments and echoes of the earlier movements are woven into the fabric of this movement. The music mounts to a dynamic climax, before the appearance of the passacaglia theme by the cello and then the viola, accompanied by the pervasive rhythm of the principal theme. There is a return to two elements of the first movement after which the music fades away.
BEETHOVEN. String Quartet No. 7 in F Major, Opus 59, No. 1 "Razumovsky" The year 1806 was tremendously productive for Beethoven: he composed the third Leonora Overture, the Fourth Symphony, and the Thirty-two Variations in C minor for piano solo as well as the three Razumovsky Quartets. Named for the Russian ambassador to Vienna who commissioned them, these quartets mark the middle period of Beethoven's creativity in this medium. All the movements of this long quartet are cast in sonata or modified sonata form, sometimes with original and creative departures. For example, the first movement Allegro opens with a lyrical song in the cello that heralds the Razumovsky's exuberant music. This cello solo announces the composer's originality: a lyrical first subject in a sonata principle work was a rare phenomenon in 1806. This cello theme is the real substance of the movement, its two halves dominating the development and the coda despite the rich variety of subsidiary material in the exposition. Beethoven makes another dramatic formal change in this movement: for the first time in a quartet he forgoes the traditional repeat of the exposition. As if to balance this structural omission, a monumental double fugue crowns the development section. The second movement Allegretto, a scherzo, surprisingly replaces the conventional adagio. Its triple rhythm and vigorous humor are characteristic of Beethoven scherzos, and it may be interpreted as a scherzo with two trios. It may also be interpreted as a fully realized sonata allegro movement in which the entire composition is built on the motif of the opening bars--here more rhythmic than melodic. One critic has referred to this scherzo as "wonderfully strange, not to say, weird" because its sudden modulations appear to create a harmonic instability that runs counter to classical sonata form. At one point in the movement traces of a dance-like atmosphere momentarily suggest a Viennese waltz. In the majestic Adagio Beethoven plunges into deep despair. Haunting melodic ideas coincide with restless dissonances, further sharpening the tragic pathos. The movement is marked mesto (sad), and its four voices weave their separate magic, although the cello perhaps speaks most eloquently. A violin cadenza and trill lead without interruption into the finale. The final Allegrois exuberant. Razumovsky had asked Beethoven to include Russian folk melodies in the quartets, and for this movement the composer selected an elegiac folksong from a collection and gave it his highly imaginative treatment. Although the folk melody was in a minor key and in a slow tempo, Beethoven used it in the major and set it at twice the tempo. According to one critic Beethoven's treatment of "Ach! Talan li moi, talan takoi" ("Ah, my luck, such luck") must have sounded "in Russian ears not unlike 'Deep River' played allegro would sound to American ears." The finale of the first Razumovsky quartet is filled with high spirits and contrapuntal play. As the same critic notes, "the melancholy Slavic soul retires" before Beethoven's "vigorous onslaught."
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