Author: SA office

The three pieces in this concert are all examples of how a single idea can permeate a musical work, giving it – without the listener being aware- an integrity lacking in randomly chosen movements.  The Haydn quartet is built on scales,  the Dutilleux on its initial 6-note chord and the Beethoven on just two pairs of semitones.

 

Josef Haydn (1732-1809) String Quartet in E♭ Op 76 no 6 (1797)
Allegretto
Fantasia: Adagio
Menuetto: Presto, Alternativo
Finale: Allegro spiritoso

In 1795 Haydn returned from his spectacularly successful visits to England to the relatively light duties prescribed by the new Esterházy Prince Nikolaus II. Nikolaus had abandoned his father’s palace at Esterházy, sacked its extensive musical establishment, and divided his time between Eisenstadt and Vienna. Haydn was kept on, but his main duty was just to write a Mass for the Princess’s name day. He was free to accept other commissions.

One such came from Count Joseph Erdödy, the Hungarian Court Chancellor. Although Erdödy’s father had employed an orchestra to play in their family’s three palaces,  on inheriting the title in 1789 his son responded both to contemporary taste and financial stringency by replacing it with a string quartet. In 1796 he placed a generous commission with Haydn for six quartets. The resulting ‘Erdödy’ quartets are a triumph, perhaps the pinnacle of Haydn’s long quartet-writing career.

Ever since Haydn had invented the mature string quartet in his Op 20 group of 6 quartets he had been experimenting with its form. Today’s quartet is no exception.  The first movement is a leisurely Allegretto cast as a theme and variations.  The theme (illustrated) is a sequence of ‘laconic phrases until the lilting expansive cadence of its final bars’ (Rosemary Hughes).  Notice that each of the illustrated four initial phrases contains three notes of a rising scale.  This scale motif is central to the whole quartet.  Three variations at the leisurely Allegretto tempo follow before the starting gate is raised on an Allegro fugue which then metamorphoses into a final variation.

Haydn is disingenuous with the Fantasia second movement.  Unlike Mozart who rarely strayed outside key signatures of 3 sharps or flats, Haydn was given to writing in lots of them.  This movement is really in B major – 5 sharps, but it starts (illustrated) with no key signature albeit with the notes liberally sprinkled with sharps.  Was this a riposte to complaints from his players about dreadful keys, or is the lack of key signature granting him licence for his upcoming fantastic explorations of the key-space?  These explorations are facilitated by a series of four rising scales (echoing both the start of this movement and of the first movement) first on the violin and then on the cello.  They lead the music off all around the block to Ab before a second lot of cello scales brings us home to B major and a proper key signature.  The second half gives us a serene and poignant development of the theme.

Scales continue to figure in the scherzo-like Menuetto, and return in spades for its ‘Alternativo’ trio section which consists of almost nothing else: first rising, then falling. Four falling scales also make up the theme of the spirited final movement (illustrated).

Henri Dutilleux (1916-2013) String Quartet  ‘Ainsi la nuit’ (1976)
Nocturne; Miroir d’espace; Litanies; Litanies II; Constellations; Nocturne II; Temps suspendu

Dutilleux’s published output is rather small.  He did not lack creative spirit, but rather was too self-critical:

“I always doubt my work. I always have regrets. That’s why I revise my work so much and, at the same time, I regret not being more prolific. But the reason I am not more prolific is because I doubt my work and spend a lot of time changing it. It’s paradoxical, isn’t it?”

His care is appreciated by conductor and composer Esa-Pekka Salonen: “His production is rather small but every note has been weighed with golden scales… It’s just perfect – very haunting, very beautiful. There’s some kind of sadness in his music which I find very touching and arresting.”  Not everyone agrees.  That skilful skewerer of reputations, Philip Hensher, calls him “the Laura Ashley of music; tasteful, unfaultable, but hardly ever daring … Personally,” Hensher admits to his Daily Telegraph readers, “I can’t stick him.”

Dutilleux’s only string quartet ‘Ainsi la nuit’ is a good piece to judge whether you are with Salonen or Hensher.  Dutilleux’s sound-world builds on his compatriots Debussy, Ravel and Messiaen but also includes Bartók and Stravinsky, with a preference for the modal and atonal over the simple tonal. Many of the quartet’s intriguing sounds are based on the opening six-note chord (illustrated) which particularly contains the intervals of the fifth (C#-G#, F-C) and the second (F-G, C-D).  The seven short movements explore different string techniques: pizzicato, glissando, harmonics, very high and very low, very quiet and very loud.  Dutilleux, like Sibelius, has in his own words “a tendency not to present the theme in its definitive state at the beginning.  There are small cells which develop bit by bit”.  So, see what you think and do talk about it in the interval.

Interval

 Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 – 1827) String Quartet in A minor, Op.132 (1825)
Assai sostenuto – Allegro
Allegro ma non troppo
Molto adagio
Alla marcia, assai vivace – piú allegro
Finale (allegro appassionato)

Beethoven’s last three years (1824-7) were predominantly occupied in composing what we now refer to as his late string quartets: Ops 127, 132, 130 (with its original ending the Great Fugue Op 133 ), 131 and 135.  In November 1822, it had been 12 years since he had completed a quartet – the F minor Op 95 Serioso – and his interest in quartet writing might never have seriously revived had he not had a commission for “one, two or three quartets” from Prince Nicholas Galitzin, an excellent young amateur cellist from St Petersburg, living in Vienna. It is said that the commission almost went to Weber, whose recent opera Die Freischütz, had excited Galitzin; but fortunately Karl Zeuner, the viola player in Galitzin’s own quartet, nudged him towards Beethoven instead.  Completing the Missa Solemnis and the Ninth Symphony occupied Beethoven for another eighteen months, but he finished three quartets for Galitzin, Ops 127, 132 and 130, in February, July and November of 1825. Op 131 followed, uncommissioned, immediately after.

The germinal idea of Op 132 is a pair of semitones (G#-A, E-F) in the cello’s opening phrase (illustrated), which is joined by the other three instruments playing variants of the same motif.  This slow introduction is broken by rapid semiquavers from the first violin leading into an important motif (illustrated) which starts with one of the opening’s semitone pairs (E-F).  The dotted rhythm (under y) provides a rhythmic engine to the movement and ends with the other semitone pair (G#-A).

The lilting opening of the following movement – a sort of Minuet and Trio –  is again rich in pairs of semitones.  Its mixture of the gentle and the acid always surprises, as does the curious Trio section with its bagpipe-like drone, its tricky part for the viola and the violent buffeting of a section in duple rather than triple time.

Beethoven had become worryingly ill with stomach problems in April 1825.  His doctor strictly implored him (he admired Beethoven’s music) to forgo wine, coffee and all spices.  Beethoven obeyed, the change in diet worked and a few weeks later Beethoven was back to composing.  The gratefully heartfelt slow movement is entitled “A Hymn of Thanksgiving from a Convalescent to God, in the prayerful Lydian mode”.  Like a Bach chorale prelude, the movement opens (illustrated) with the lines of a hymn (under x) interleaved by faster moving phrases.  After the hymn, there is a dramatic change to the optimism of D major for a faster variation section marked “New Strength” in which the two violins dance around each other.  A more syncopated version of the hymn returns followed again by a variation and finally by a yet more syncopated fantasia on the hymn marked “with the most intimate feeling”. The convalescent falls asleep with gentle sighs…

…only to be woken by a disturbing March, with stresses on the wrong beats and a sinister fading of the motif in the second bar.  This March is very soon interrupted by a recitative from the first violin.  It is similar in form to the cello/bass recitatives in the Ninth Symphony, but here the mood is anguished, terrified, culminating in what Joseph Kerman describes as  a scream as the violin holds a high F and then cascades down to a desolate bar of the  semitone E-F that leads into the final movement.

The E-F semitone forms the second violin’s neurotic accompaniment (illustrated, under x), to the first violin’s restless theme with its G#-A semitone (under y).  A gentler theme with decorative trills brings some hope, but wild cross-rhythms augment the tension culminating in an anguished outburst high on the cello as the tempo hits Presto.  But the key then shifts to a radiant A major, and the quartet ends in a mood of joyful optimism.

Angus Watson’s “Beethoven’s Chamber Music in Context” was helpful in preparing these notes.

Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) Piano Trio No 1 in D minor Op 49 (1839)
Molto allegro ed agitato
Andante con moto tranquillo
Scherzo: Leggiero e vivace
Finale

By 1839, the 30-year-old Mendelssohn was established.  He had been in Leipzig conducting the Gewandhaus Orchestra for four years, and had been married for two.  His work load was daunting: conducting and also frequently performing as pianist in 20 Gewandhaus orchestral concerts a year, together with chamber concerts, charity concerts, and ad hoc concerts for visiting virtuosi.  The Gewandhaus concerts were an eclectic mix of the classics (mainly Beethoven and Mozart) and the contemporary (including Mendelssohn’s own works).  One notable 1839 concert featured the world premiere of Schubert’s ‘Great’ C-major symphony which Robert Schumann had recently unearthed in Vienna.  As well as orchestral works the concerts often included acts from operas or chamber music perhaps with Mendelssohn himself on piano.

In his teens Mendelssohn had explored various chamber music forms, most notably the remarkable String Octet of 1825 and his first two published String Quartets, but also three less-frequently played Piano Quartets which preceded the Octet.  In 1837 he had returned to composing chamber music after a gap of almost 10 years, working on a set of three String Quartets while on his honeymoon. Tonight’s D minor Piano Trio followed soon after in 1839. Schumann loved it: ‘This is the master trio of our age, as were the B flat and D major trios of Beethoven and the E flat trio of Schubert in their times. It is an exceedingly fine composition which will gladden our grandchildren and great-grandchildren for many years to come.’  Yet it had not been without its problems.  As Robert Philip points out:

‘After Mendelssohn had finished it, he showed it to the composer Ferdinand Hiller, who was staying with him in Leipzig. Hiller was very impressed, but had ‘one small misgiving. Certain pianoforte passages in it, constructed on broken chords, seemed to me – to speak candidly – somewhat old-fashioned.’ Hiller was a long-time friend of Liszt and Chopin, and was ‘thoroughly accustomed to the richness of passages which marked the new pianoforte school’. The result of Hiller’s suggestions was that Mendelssohn rewrote the entire piano part, making it less conventional in style – and, no doubt, much more difficult to play.’

An example of this ‘new school’ writing may perhaps be in the very opening (illustrated), where Mendelssohn rapidly alternates the left and right hands of the piano’s accompaniment to augment the sense of agitation, pushing forward the gloriously expansive cello melody.

 

The slow movement has a tender beauty, a ‘Song without words’, with the strings echoing the piano.  The tenderness becomes more impassioned after the piano recalls a descending idea that the violin had used as a counter-melody in the first movement (illustrated).

 

The ‘light and lively’ Scherzo is trademark Mendelssohn recalling the Scherzo of the precocious Octet.  Masterfully written, it is even now a challenge to play at the blistering marked tempo of one bar a second.  The last movement can’t compete for sheer tempo, but uses more traditional means: contrapuntal ingenuity driven by a fiendishly complex piano part, and then the cello bursting forth with the most gloriously optimistic theme of the whole wonderful work (illustrated).

 

Joaquín Turina (1882-1949) Piano Trio No.2 in B minor Op.76 (1933)
Lento; Allegro molto moderato; Allegretto
Molto vivace; Lento; Molto vivace
Lento; Andante mosso; Allegretto; Meno mosso; Moderato; Allegretto; Allegro molto moderato; Allegro vivo

Born in Seville, Turina initially followed his family’s wishes by studying medicine, but could not stay away from music.  Ambition drove him to Madrid in 1902 to study at the Real Conservatorio, where he became friends with Manuel de Falla.  Discouraged by the failure of his efforts in the popular and potentially lucrative form of zarzuela comic operas (named after a royal hunting lodge that was thick with zarzas – brambles), he moved to Paris three years later.  There he studied at the Schola Cantorum, an institution set up by Vincent d’Indy and others to counter the Paris Conservatoire’s emphasis on opera.  It provided a solid grounding in ancient and classical technique with a stolid diet of traditional church music.  But Paris also introduced Turina (and de Falla who had followed in 1907) to Debussy, Ravel, Franck and Albeniz.  Albeniz and de Falla advised Turina to enliven his Schola-influenced work with material from Spanish popular music.  The advice was good and when the outbreak of WW1 forced both Turina and de Falla back to Spain, they were successful.  Turina stayed in Madrid becoming professor of composition at the Madrid Conservatoire in 1930.

Turina’s second Piano Trio laces his classical training with distinctive Spanish forms and material.  We start with three wistful Lento bars complete with a characteristically poignant triplet; they lead into the flowing opening theme (illustrated).  The tempo drops to Allegretto and the second theme recalls the opening Lento.  The tempo changes again to yet another melody combining ideas from the two preceding ones.  The movement  continues to move pleasingly between these different tempi and their related melodies.

The second movement is resembles a Scherzo and Trio.  It starts fast in 5/8 (like a Castilian Rueda dance), then a short slow section in 3/4 before recapitulating the fast section.   The last movement starts dramatically Lento then Andante with big chords reminiscent of Brahms before the piano plunges off into a hearty waltz-like Allegretto (illustrated).  Numerous varied episodes at different tempi follow incorporating material from the preceding movements.

 

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) Piano Trio in B flat Op. 97 ‘Archduke’ (1811)
Allegro moderato
Scherzo & Trio:  Allegro
Andante cantabile ma però con moto
Allegro moderato – Presto

Beethoven’s Op 97 ‘Archduke‘ Trio of 1811 is the middle one of a remarkable sequence of three chamber works. It comes between the Op 95 ‘Serioso‘ String Quartet of 1810 and the glorious Op 96 Violin Sonata of 1812.   The Trio’s dedicatee Archduke Rudolph was the Emperor Leopold II’s youngest son, a piano and composition pupil of Beethoven.  Their relationship was close and long-lasting: Rudolph not only admired Beethoven and tolerated his foibles but, together with the Princes Kinsky and Lobkowitz, contracted to provide Beethoven with an annuity so that ‘the necessities of life shall not cause him embarrassment or clog his powerful genius‘.  During Napoleon’s occupation of Vienna in 1809 Rudolph had sought sanctuary in Hungary, prompting Beethoven’s regretful ‘Lebewohl‘ Piano Sonata.   Following Napoleon’s departure, Rudolph returned early in 1810, but by then Beethoven had other problems: love and money.  First, Therèse Malfatti turned him down.  He wrote self-pityingly to his friend Ignaz von Gleichenstein, who had introduced them, ‘For your poor B, no happiness can come from outside.  You must create everything for yourself in your own heart; and only in the world of ideals can you find friends’.  Incidentally, as a farewell present he gave Therèse a little Bagatelle, later published with the probable misattribution of Für Elise.  Second, because of inflation following the Napoleonic Wars, Beethoven’s annuity declined in purchasing power (though the kindly Rudolph later agreed to reinstate the real value of his share).

Whereas the Op 95 ‘Serioso‘ String Quartet reflects these traumas and tensions, the ‘Archduke‘ Trio miraculously rises above them.  The work opens with a spacious melody first on the piano, then on the violin (illustrated).  The opening bar figures prominently in the development, while the third bar material (under x) yields a novel pizzicato dialogue between the two strings, an example of the new textures that Beethoven creates in this work.  The opening of the Scherzo (illustrated) begins another string dialogue, using material related to that under x and y in the first example.  Its lightness contrasts with the creepy gloom of the opening of the Trio.

The Andante is one of Beethoven’s most sublime: a set of variations on a miraculously extended theme.  The opening, though richly scored, is marked piano semplice and piano dolce dissuading the players from overindulgence.  Three variations increase in movement and complexity until the fourth reverts to quiet contemplation of the original theme by the individual instruments.  This reverie is rudely broken and the piano suggests something quite different which the strings, maybe against their better judgment, come round to agreeing to.  What follows is something of a piano concerto, perhaps acknowledging the Archduke’s skill.  The violin is banished to its lower register, and the cello is only occasionally allowed to shine high.  But the piano has a ball: Presto, Più Presto.  Fine.