Programme Notes

Maurice Ravel 1875-1937 ‘Le Tombeau de Couperin’ for Piano (1918)
Arranged for wind Quintet by Mason Jones (1919-2009)

Prélude. Vif
Fugue. Allegro moderato
Menuet. Allegro moderato
Rigaudon. Assez vif

Musically, ‘Un Tombeau’ is a piece written in memory of someone. Ravel’s original six movement piece for piano is patriotically titled as being in memory of François Couperin (1668-1733), who established a distinctively French keyboard style of composition; but each of the movements is also dedicated to the memory of a different close friend killed in the first world war. When war broke out Ravel was working on his piano trio, the symphonic poem La Valse and a few other projects including Le Tombeau. He completed the piano trio in five weeks and then volunteered for service. His several attempts to enlist as an aircraft pilot were turned down on health grounds, but he finally became a driver in the motor transport corps. Despite the death in January 1917 of his mother, who was perhaps the only person to whom he was emotionally attached, Ravel finished the six pieces of Le Tombeau and planned to perform them. When bombing postponed the initial performance, Ravel used the time to create an orchestral version of four of the original six movements.

Notes by Chris Darwin.

---

Sally Beamish b1956

Adagio and Variations after Mozart, for Flute, Cor Anglais, Clarinet, Horn and Bassoon (2011)

Sally Beamish studied Viola and Composition at the Royal Northern College of Music where her composition tutors were Anthony Gilbert and Lennox Berkeley. She has written chamber music, symphonies and concertos. In 2020 she was awarded the OBE for services to music. Sally Beamish now lives in Sussex.

The New London Chamber Orchestra asked Sally Beamish for an arrangement of Mozart’s Adagio for glass harmonica, flute, oboe, viola and cello (K617). She wrote “I wanted to try to capture some of the strange beauty of the instrument. I used cor anglais…to give a warm, dark quality to the quintet – when I’d finished I had the impulse to launch into a set of variations and here I cast each of the five instruments in turn as a soloist, sometimes with a duo partner. The Adagio theme returns at the end with each player adding a fragment from its own version”.

Notes by Helen Simpson

---

Grażyna Bacewicz (1909 – 1969)

Wind Quintet (1932)
Allegro
Air. Andante
Allegretto
Vivo

Grażyna Bacewicz was born in Poland. Her father was Polish and her mother Lithuanian. Her musical tuition began at home and continued at the Warsaw Conservatory with violin and composition studies. Her composition tutor was Nadia Boulanger. During the occupation of Poland Bacewicz and her family were in Warsaw where she wrote to her brother “the situation is spiritually dire”. Nevertheless she continued to compose and perform with friends. Later, in 1956 the Warsaw Autumn Festival featured three of Bacewicz’s compositions.

The quintet to be played today won the First Prize in the Concours de la Société “Aide aux femmes de professions libres” Paris 1933.

Allegro. This is cheerful, light and athletic. All five parts are equally important and they pass the motifs around freely.

Air. Andante. A more reflective mood is shown here and as in the first movement this is moving towards atonality.

Allegretto. A bright folk-like melody is worked over here. It is a controlled rendition and not overly rustic.

Vivo. This, like the opening movement, shows her witty light touch and the elegant instrumental lines now draw the piece to a close.

Notes by Helen Simpson

---

Krzysztof Penderecki (1933 – 2020)

Prelude for Solo Clarinet (1987)

Penderecki was Polish and he studied at the Academy of Music in Kraków, graduating in 1958. He subsequently taught there and it was then that his well known piece Threnody to the victims of Hiroshima was written. In the 1970s Penderecki moved to Yale School of Music in the USA. During his lifetime he won many awards and he is one of Poland’s best known composers. His influence is wide and much of his music can be heard as film soundtracks.

The Prelude for Solo Clarinet was given to the British composer Paul Patterson on his 40th birthday. The first performance was given in Manchester in 1987. It is improvisatory in character and is written with no bar lines. However one can discern the A B A structure with the middle section’s chromatic runs and trill – like thirds which contrast with the sparseness of the opening and closing sections.

Notes by Helen Simpson​​

---

Carl Nielsen (1865-1931)

Quintet for Flute, Oboe / Cor Anglais, Clarinet, Horn & Bassoon Op 43 (1922)
Allegro ben moderato
Menuetto
Praeludium: Adagio. Tema con variazioni: Un poco andantino

Carl Nielsen was the seventh of house painter and amateur musician Niels Jørgensen’s 12 children. Why Nielsen rather than Jørgensen? Although the Danish aristocracy had long used hereditary surnames, many ordinary Danes stuck with the old patronymic system until the late 19^th century. Carl followed his father in playing the violin and cornet, and composed from the age of 8. But his family did not encourage him to study music, apprenticing him aged 14 to a shopkeeper, who fortunately went broke almost immediately. Carl then became an army bugler and trombonist, and composed some works for brass ensemble. He was introduced to the composer Niels Gade, Professor at the Copenhagen Conservatoire, who took to the young man, and at 19, Nielsen began studying with him. After graduation, Nielsen taught violin and also played violin in the Royal Danish Orchestra.

Although he is now best known for his concertos and his six symphonies, in which brass instruments figure prominently, he also wrote some chamber music, most notably four string quartets and today’s wind quintet.

The quintet is a relatively late work and was inspired by a phone call to a pianist friend who happened to be rehearsing the Mozart Sinfonia Concertante with four wind players. The piece was written very much with those overheard individuals in mind; it reveals the personalities both of the instruments and of the players, sometimes alone, more often in conversation or argument. The work is genial and entertaining, often with a Poulenc-like playfulness.

The last movement is the most complex. Like the last movement of Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante, it is a set of variations. They are introduced by a short Prelude in which each instrument makes a cadenza-like statement – the oboe being replaced briefly by the cor anglais. The variations are based on Nielsen’s own chorale tune ‘My Jesus, make my heart to love thee’. He describes them as ‘… now gay and grotesque, now elegiac and solemn, ending with the theme itself, simply and gently expressed.’ The reprised theme, marked Andante festivo, is in the more choraley 4/4 time rather than the opening version’s 3/4 – a joyfully serious end to a warm-hearted piece.

Notes by Chris Darwin.

---

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 – 1791)

La Ci Darem La Mano, Duettino from Don Giovanni, Act 1 (1787)
Arranged for Wind Quintet by Raj Bhaumik (b2004)

Raj Bhaumik the Clarinetist in this quintet has arranged the very well known seduction aria sung by Don Giovanni to Zerlina. Mozart sets the Don’s teasing words and Zerlina’s responses that offer little hesitation and which accelerate the departure of the pair off stage for further persuasion. Lorenzo Da Ponte’s text for the opera takes the well known archetype and in this duet he shows that Zerlina is fully in control and through her repetitions and extensions of the Don’s phrases she confidently tells him what he wants to hear. Today’s instrumental arrangement of the aria will demonstrate this personal interplay despite there being no words in the performance.

Notes by Helen Simpson

Dora Pejačević 1885-1923

Piano Quartet in D minor Op. 25

Dora was born in Budapest to an aristocratic family. Her father was a Croatian count and her mother a Hungarian singer and pianist. This maternal influence was to guide Dora away from an unfulfilling aristocratic life into a more challenging musical future. A pseudo-biographical film “Countess Dora” was made in 1993.

Her musical education came from Zagreb, Dresden and Munich and she developed a wide circle of friends such as Rainer Maria Rilke, Karl Kraus and the pianist Alice Ripper. Some of her earliest compositions are songs and solo piano pieces. The Piano Quartet Op 25 was the first such for this combination. Previously Dora had made an arrangement of a piano impromptu and set it for Piano Quartet. In 1908 her D minor Piano Quartet Op 25 set her on a new track combining strings and piano in her early romantic style. She was 23yrs old.

Allegro ma non troppo The first movement is immediately engaging with long sweeping lines from the strings underpinned by pianistic energy.

Andante con moto A sweet rich opening gives way to interplay between the cello and viola while the piano ripples the harmonic skeleton alongside them. There is a simplicity here that belies the complexity of the whole quartet, however it acts as a contrast to the other movements in the accepted manner of the time.

Menuetto This is more tart and rhythmic at its opening. Predictability in the menuetto is saved by the repeat of the more spikey opening. Harmonically this movement is straightforward and has no surprises.

Rondo This combines all the stylistic elements of the early movements. Strings pass the themes to each other while the piano for the most part provides a rich accompaniment with flashes of thematic material. The quartet closes with a suitably dramatic cadence.

 

Robin Holloway b.1943

Piano Quartet Op 143 This is dedicated to Tom Poster and today’s performance is the World Première.

Robin Holloway is a well known composer. He studied English and Music at Kings college Cambridge. Composition tuition was taken from Alexander Goehr and Bayan Northcott. His doctoral thesis was on Debussy and Wagner. Cambridge is still home and throughout his working life he has taught composers such as Thomas Adès, Huw Watkins, Peter Seabourne, George Benjamin, Judith Weir and Jonathan Dove. Holloway’s own music has been summed up by David Matthews as being “formed by a productive conflict between Romanticism and modernism”. In addition Holloway has written numerous articles and book reviews.

 

Johannes Brahms 1833-1897

Piano Quartet No.1 in G minor

Brahms was born in Hamburg and was familiar with Beethoven and Bach’s musical sound-world. As a young man he made a name as a pianist where he made more money than as a composer with published scores. His repertoire was mainly Bach and Beethoven. Brahms is now known for having imposed classical order on his compositions which marked him out in the period of otherwise Romantic music. In 1861 the year of the composition of his G minor piano quartet Brahms was struggling for recognition as a composer. Now in Hamburg, Clara Schumann, 14yrs his senior, was sympathetic and performed the piece in Hamburg in 1861, the year of its composition.

Brahms had written violin sonatas for Joseph Joachim and trios and string quartets but the piano was so important that it was simply embedded into the string ensemble of violin, viola and cello. Brahms performed the piece himself in Vienna in 1862.

Allegro This is homophonic with regular phrase lengths. The piano is thoroughly integrated with the strings. The D major contrasting section gives way to a reprise of the G minor opening. The pianist composer is obvious here.

Intermezzo: Allegro ma non troppo Strings open this lilting dance-like movement. The piano swiftly joins in and the melody is shared. There is the beginning of Brahms’ use of 2/3 rhythm common to many later pieces. This movement is also in ABA structure and as such conforms to expectations. Brahms spells Clara’s name in the melody with C & A kept, but B & G substituting L & R. A short coda rounds off.

Andante con moto A broad balanced opening theme sets this up in E♭ major, a rich sounding key. Animato marks a shift to C major and a change of texture and mood which is martial and decisive in nature. The reprise is prepared then realised in E♭ with a fuller and more flowing texture. It closes with a measured relaxing phrase.

 

Rondo alla Zingarese Here is a real dance with plenty of rustic charm and virtuosic playing for his audience. Meno presto Now a bold slower tempo here as directed, but still it’s a dance. The mood relaxes briefly and then through a series of short sections teases the listener as false climaxes are reached and immediately dissolved. The pianistic dominance brings the whole quartet to a triumphant finish.

 

Helen Simpson

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) Piano Trio in E flat Op 1 No 1 (before 1794)

Allegro
Adagio cantabile
Scherzo. Allegro assai
Finale. Presto

Beethoven’s three Op 1 trios are dedicated to Prince Karl von Lichnowsky who had been generous to Beethoven after his arrival in Vienna. A composer and collector of Bach manuscripts, Lichnowsky had also been very generous to Mozart lending him a substantial sum of money, which Mozart was unable to repay. It has recently come to light that the Prince sued Mozart and, a few weeks before Mozart died, the court found in the Prince’s favour and requisitioned half of Mozart’s salary from the Imperial Court. Beethoven initially fared better and secured a substantial annuity from the Prince which was paid until the two had a furious quarrel in 1806 causing Beethoven, in turn, to sue Lichnowsky.

Before the three Op 1 piano trios were published by Artaria in 1795, Beethoven had already written a substantial amount of  chamber music: at least 3 piano quartets (WoO 36), another piano trio  (WoO 38) and a wind octet (Op 103).  He probably began work on his Opus 1 trios in his home town of Bonn, but continued to work on them after his move to Vienna in 1792, where Haydn, who was teaching Beethoven, heard them performed.

Haydn advised Beethoven not to publish the C minor trio – the third of the set. Beethoven took offence, thinking Haydn jealous and ill-disposed to him, though Haydn said he was simply trying to protect Beethoven from what he thought would be a hostile public response. Nonetheless, Beethoven delayed publication and revised the trios, partly as a result of Haydn’s remarks, but also to ensure good sales on the basis of his growing reputation. His efforts and guile were well rewarded with an initial subscription of 241 copies bringing in the equivalent of many thousand pounds today. The extended family of Prince Lichnowsky, the Trios’ dedicatee, bought 52 copies. Not bad for the Op 1 of a 25-year-old.

The Trios are rich in ideas (‘When I re-read the manuscripts I wondered at my folly in collecting into a single work materials enough for twenty’) and have many of Beethoven’s characteristic trade-marks. In Beethoven’s hands the piano trio form moves beyond the traditional three-movement design of Haydn and Mozart: he adds a movement, casts the individual movements on a larger scale, and, partly because of improvements in piano technology, is able to free the cello from merely enriching the piano’s bass-line.

Perhaps to emphasise these innovations, Op 1 no 1 opens with a backward look to the Mannheim of fifty years earlier.  The attention-grabbing rising arpeggio is an example of the Mannheim Rocket – one of a clutch of devices exploited by those composing for the technically brilliant Mannheim orchestra; others included the Roller (a long crescendo), the Tremble and the Sigh. The violin gets to state the second theme (illustrated) whose opening (under x) is reused in the second movement.  Towards the end of this genial and boisterous first movement Beethoven plays the false-ending trick – one that Haydn loved – before a long and novel final coda. The Adagio slow movement is, unusually in a rondo form with the opening material (illustrated) alternating with new ideas.  Its start (under y) has an obvious relationship to the x passage of the first movement.

After the Scherzo we arrive at the boisterous Presto Finale which opens with a provocatively playfully jump of a tenth.  More provocations follow – a slithery semitone descent perhaps cocking a snook at Mozart’s chromaticisms leading into a parody of Haydn’s Gypsy Rondo style.  But the best is yet to come.  After some daring modulations, the strings try to tip-toe away in a slow  pianissimo semitone descent, but the piano leaps out at them blowing a giant raspberry (illustrated) and then skips away as if nothing had happened.

Frank Martin (1890 – 1974) Trio on Popular Irish Folk Tunes (1925)

Allegro moderato
Adagio
Gigue  

Frank Martin was born in Geneva, the tenth child of a Calvinist, Huguenot pastor; this Christian background particularly influenced his large-scale theatrical and choral works. Much of his chamber music was written in the 1920s and 30s during which time he was heavily involved in the Geneva Chamber Music Society that he had founded. Today’s Trio comes from early in this period. His most individual music, however, started to emerge in the mid-1930s when he developed his own more tonal and rhythmically energetic variety of Schoenberg’s 12-tone system. The toe-tapping rhythmic liveliness of the outer two movements of this Trio may not be entirely due to its Irish sources. In the 1920s Martin worked closely with Émile JaquesDalcroze. “Dalcroze Eurhythmics” emphasised the importance of bodily movement in music education, and was taken up later by “Music & Movement” in the UK and the Orff approach in the US.

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) Piano Trio No. 2 in C, Op 87 (1882)

Allegro
Andante con moto (Tema con variazioni)
Scherzo: Presto – Trio: Poco meno presto
Finale: Allegro giocoso 

By 1880 Brahms had not composed a piano trio for almost 30 years, but then, like no. 87 buses, two came along at once: one in C, the other in E-flat.  Brahms often started to compose contrasting pairs of works at the same time; he started these trios shortly before the contrasting Academic Festival and Tragic Overtures.  After composing the first movements of both trios, he set them aside and, ever self-critical, eventually destroyed the one in E-flat – despite Clara Schumann’s preference for it.  A couple of years later, after finishing his second piano concerto, he returned to and completed this C major trio.

In the 30-odd years since his Op 8 B major trio, the piano had become more powerful, and Brahms had gained experience of writing for piano with a larger group of strings (piano quartets and a quintet) or as soloist in a piano concerto.  Consequently, the relationship between the strings in the Op 87 trio is different from that in the much earlier Op 8 trio. The difference is evident from the start: the work opens with the violin and cello playing the expansive main theme (illustrated) in octaves treating them as a single voice against the piano. In fact, all the other movements also open with the strings in octaves.  Despite the increased power of the 1880s piano, and Brahms’ proclivity for dense chording, it is important to bear in mind that the Streicher piano that he was then composing at was considerably lighter in sound than a modern Steinway concert grand: “to hear Brahms’s music on an instrument like the Streicher is to realize that the thick textures we associate with his work, the sometimes muddy chords in the bass and the occasionally woolly sonorities, come cleaner and clearer on a lighter, straight-strung piano. Those textures, then, are not a fault of Brahms’s piano composition.” (Edwin Good).

Half-way through the movement Brahms plays a master stroke,  the tempo notches up animato and the cello transforms the jauntily dotted opening phrase by slowing it in a heartfelt espressivo (illustrated) above ripples on the piano.

A further modification of the opening gives the theme for the variations of the second movement.  The rising third (now A to C) is still there, but the original dotted rhythm is reversed into a ‘Scotch snap’  (as in ‘body coming through the rye’).

At the end of the theme Brahms pulls a cunning technical trick:  the two halves of the  last 7 bars (illustrated) consist of a phrase followed by its inversion (rising intervals replaced by downward and vice versa).  Such devices reflect Brahms’ thorough classical schooling (inversion of fugue subjects was a favourite baroque device), but using inversion to complete a melody looks forward, and perhaps contributed to Schoenberg’s famous view of “Brahms the Progressive”.

The Presto Scherzo again starts with string octaves with the hallmark rising third, but this time in a fleeting pianissimo in C minor.   It is gloriously contrasted in the slightly slower trio section by one of Brahms’ wonderful soaring melodies (illustrated) back in C major.

String octaves and a rising third again start off the playful Finale – Allegro giocoso. The piano accompanies with a descending figure of repeated quavers (illustrated) which is extended and frequently recurs as a sort of laughing motif throughout this good-natured movement.

See Chris Darwin’s Programme Notes for other works on his web page.

Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) Three Divertimenti for string quartet (1936)

March
Waltz
Burlesque

These pieces originated in 1933, while Britten was studying at the RCM, as part of a planned 5-movement suite for string quartet called Alla quartetto serioso ‘Go play, boy, play’ – Continue reading 16th February 2025 – Doric String Quartet plus students – Programme notes

Franz Schubert (1797-1828) String Quartet D.804 in A minor (Rosamunde) (1824)
Allegro ma non troppo
Andante
Menuetto – Allegretto – Trio
Allegro moderato

At the age of eight, Schubert started to learn the violin from his father; six years later he was composing for the family string quartet: brothers Ignaz and Ferdinand on violin, Franz on viola and his father on cello. However, the eleven or so quartets that Schubert wrote between the ages of 14 and 20 are now, like Mozart’s early quartets, rarely played. The exuberant “Trout” piano quintet of 1819 and the surviving first movement of a C minor quartet (“Quartettsatz”) written in 1820 set the scene for the great chamber works of his later years: in 1824 the Octet, today’s A minor “Rosamunde” quartet and the D minor “Death and the Maiden”, in 1826 the G major quartet; in 1827 his two piano trios, and in 1828, his last year, the incomparable C major two-cello quintet.

The Rosamunde quartet takes its name from the Andante’s theme, which had appeared in the incidental music Schubert wrote in 1822 for an unsuccessful play of that name. The play was lost, but the incidental music was rescued from the oblivion of family chests by Sir George Grove and Arthur Sullivan on a trip to Vienna in 1867.

The quartet was written a little while after Schubert had been diagnosed with syphilis; his declining health led to depression (“the most unhappy and wretched creature in the world”) but also to a burst of creativity. The quartet’s mood is lyrical and wistful, its poignant pathos only occasionally interrupted by outbursts that presage the impending torments of “Death and the Maiden” and the terrors of the C-major quartet.

The opening two bars have the second violin simply setting the A-minor key but with the viola and cello providing an underlying threatening tremble. The first violin provides the theme (illustrated) which recalls one of Schubert’s songs ‘Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel’: “My peace is gone, My heart is sore, I shall find it never and nevermore”.

 

The Andante soaks us in the beautiful Rosamunde theme (illustrated) which eventually migrates into the minor and an agitated fortissimo outburst before peace is restored.

The Menuet maintains the mood of wistful melancholy in A-minor, whilst the Trio optimistically moves into A major though recalling an earlier Schubert song ‘The Gods of Greece’ whose mood is not one of optimism: “Beautiful world, where are you? … no god reveals himself to me”.

The last movement is a free-wheeling Rondo based on gypsy idioms. As Stephen Hefling writes: “…drone harmonies, accented second beats, a variety of dotted rhythms and quasi-improvised ritardandos. Such style hongrois is apparently Schubert’s symbolic identification with the gypsies, those passionate, melancholy bohemians rejected by bourgeoisie and aristocrats alike, whose wretched circumstances probably seemed similar to his own.”

György Kurtág (b.1926) 6 Moments Musicaux Op 44 (2005)

I. Invocatio (un fragment). Con moto, passionato
II. Footfalls (…mintha valaki jönne…- as if someone were coming). Molto sostenuto
III. Capriccio. Ben ritmato
IV. In memoriam György Sebők. Mesto, pesante
V. Rappel des oiseaux (etude pour les harmoniques). Léger, tendre, volatil à Tabea Zimmerman
VI. Les Adieux (in Janáčeks Manier [sic]). Parlando. rubato

Born into a Hungarian Jewish family in northern Romania, Kurtág moved to Budapest in 1946 when he was twenty. The year after the 1956 uprising he spent in Paris ostensibly to study with Messiaen and Milhaud, but in fact undergoing treatment for severe depression and a creative block from art psychologist Marianne Stein. She was hugely important in releasing and guiding his creativity. Kurtág ‘self-purified’ himself by eating only rice and performing angular gymnastics. He also copied out Webern scores, read Samuel Beckett and Kafka’s Metamorphosis, made stick figures out of matches, dust-balls and cigarette butts and felt as a ‘cockroach striving to change into a human being, seeking light and purity‘. He returned to Budapest, discarded his previous compositions and produced his ‘Opus 1’ a string quartet dedicated to Stein.

Writing for quartet suits Kurtág’s style: transparent, condensed and diverse in its sound world. Although his stye is distinctively his own, many of his compositions allude eclectically to others, for example: Hommage à Nancy Sinatra, Homage to Tchaikovsky, In Memory of a Just Person, Omaggio a Luigi Nono. Today’s 6 pieces, each about 2 minutes long, are his fourth work for string quartet and refer to: (II.) a poem by Endre Ady and Beckett’s play Footfalls whose central character paces metronomically across the stage; (III.) Kurtág’s friend and pianist György Sebők; (V.) viola player Tabea Zimmerman; and (VI.) the composer Janáček. The pieces use material from Kurtág’s Játékok, or Games – an open-ended series of pedagogical piano pieces similar to Bartók’s Mikrokosmos.

The following poem by Endre Ady accompanies the second piece which mirrors its bereft desolation:

No One Comes
Kipp-kopp, as if a woman were coming
On a dark stairway, trembling, running
My heart stops, I await something wonderful
In the autumn dusk, confident.

Kipp-kopp, my heart starts up once again
I hear it once again, to my deep and great pleasure
In a soft tempo, in a secret rhythm
As if someone were coming, were coming

Kipp-kopp, now a funeral twilight
A misty, hollow melody sounds
The autumn evening. Today no one comes to me
Today no one will come to me, no one.

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) String Quartet Op 59 No 3 in C (1805)
Introduzione: Andante con moto. Allegro vivace
Andante con moto quasi Allegretto
Menuetto. Grazioso
Allegro molto

The Op 59 Razumovsky quartets were a revolution in quartet writing. In Joseph Kerman’s words “It is probably not too much to say that Op 59 doomed the amateur string quartet.“

The conversation between equal players of Haydn, Mozart and even Beethoven in his earlier Op 18 quartets here gives way to ‘the heroic discourse of the symphony’ – and no ordinary symphony at that. The Op 59 quartets were written in 1805-6, a full four years after the Op 18 set but only shortly after the third, Eroica Symphony (Op 55). The commission was from Count Razumovsky, the Russian ambassador to Vienna and a very able second violinist in his own quartet. Its first fiddle was Ignaz Schuppanzigh a friend, inspiration and perhaps also violin teacher to Beethoven. As well as playing with the Count, Schuppanzigh had formed his own professional quartet in 1804 in order to give public quartet concerts – a radical new departure. This accomplished quartet may have encouraged Beethoven to stretch the technical demands on the players to match his more ambitious musical conceptions.

The slow introduction of the third of the Op 59 quartets is extraordinary, not only to listen to but also to play. Rebecca Clarke: “One hardly dares breathe, and can almost see the internal counting of one’s companions floating like some astral shape above them. It is such a trying thing to play – wonderful as it is – that the entry into the Allegro vivace feels exactly like a sigh of relief at gaining solid ground again.” Its significance is intriguing. Lewis Lockwood points out its harmonic relation to the introduction to Florestan’s dungeon scene in Fidelio, written a short time earlier.

Two motifs shape the ensuing Allegro: it opens with a simple cadence (illustrated under 1), which after about 40 bars of tentative exploration leads to a joyful main theme as we finally get to the home key of C major (illustrated under 2). Only Beethoven could make such a movement out of these snippets.

Angus Watson feels the Andante evokes the stillness of stories retold on long Russian winter evenings – the ticking of the cello’s persistent pizzicato interspersed with encouragements to tell it all again.

The charmingly graceful Menuet (illustrated) ) contrasts with its assertive Trio in which the viola and second violin (written with Razumovsky in mind?), egged on by the others, lift the semiquaver runs of the Menuet and show just how far they can take them.

 

 

The opening phrase of the Menuet is inverted to give the start of the last movement’s fugue (illustrated). The viola, fresh from its triumph in the Trio, kicks off at speed for ten bars. Nobody is to be outdone, especially the first violin, who initiates a string-climbing competition, cheered on by the others. Finally, the second violin transforms the underlying slow accompanying figure into a lyrical vote of thanks and the party ends in a triumphant last fling.

Programme notes by Chris Darwin

See Chris Darwin’s Programme Notes for other works on his web page.

Leo Geyer Born 1992 Unfurling

Leo Geyer was born in London of Anglo-Indian descent. He studied jointly at Manchester University and Royal Northern College of Music where the emphasis was on composition and conducting. Continue reading 15th December 2024 – Elmore Quartet – Programme notes