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Pacifica Quartet

A Pre-Concert Blog by Elizabeth Morrison

Welcome to the second post of the Eureka Chamber Music Series Pre-Concert Blog!

I hope you enjoyed the first post, devoted to Gary Hoffman and Chloe Jiyeong Mun’s concerts
on October 18th and 19th. The Blog replaces the Live & Local Pre-Concert Talks, as part of my
quest to help prepare you for the concerts, without your needing to show up on a Monday
evening on Zoom. It’s an enriched version of the printed program notes, with more context,
history and gossip that I can possibly fit into the printed playbill.

If you didn’t read the Gary Hoffman blog post before his concert, it’s not too late–it’s on this
website right below this one. Even though you’ve already heard Gary and Chloe play, you still
might enjoy checking out the links for the same kind of context you would have found at the
talk. From now on, you can count on the Blog appearing on the ECMS website two weeks before
each concert, so you can read it beforehand if you wish. You’ll get a reminder email from Kevin
when each post goes live. My thanks to the kind people who said they missed the talks, but I’m
hoping this will be a more convenient way to fulfill our mission statement, “Have more fun at the
concerts.”

On to the Pacifica Quartet concert! Their Mainstage Concert, on November 14, begins with
Barber’s String Quartet Opus 11, followed by Bartók’s Quartet No. 4, Sz. 85, giving us a rare
chance to hear two 20th century masterpieces side by side. The Barber comes first, followed by
Bartók, so we seem to be following a chronological procession from a tonally conservative piece
to a spiky modern one. But in fact the Bartók was written first. Barber composed his only quartet
in 1935, while Bartók wrote his fourth (of six) in 1928, seven years earlier.

At first glance the two composers could not be more different. Bartók, born in 1881, was
Barber’s elder by 29 years. He had a lifelong love affair with the folk music and language of his
native Hungary, and with his friend and colleague Zoltan Kodaly, was a founder of the field of
ethnomusicology. The two made many forays into the countryside to record authentic folk music
on the newly-invented Edison phonograph. As a composer, Bartók was a formidable modernist
who, while Schoenberg’s twelve-tone innovations were leading music away from tonality,
opened up a different path with folk-based modal scales and the intricate rhythms of the
Hungarian language.

Barber, born in early 20th century America, took the opposite path. Rather than turning to
America’s own trove of Black and Indigenous folk music, as Antonin Dvorák had famously
recommended, Barber chose to continue 19th century European traditions of tonal harmony,
classical form, and emotional lyricism. This commitment made him one of the most prominent
composers of his day. Though his conservative approach fell out of favor in the 1960s, in the
first half of the 20th century his music was honored and played. He received major commissions
and two Pulitzer Prizes, and was one of the few who actually made a living writing music. He
wrote his only quartet when he was in his early 20s.

Despite these differences, I was surprised to find a bit of shared DNA in the two quartets. Call it
the 20th century itself, speaking through two creative minds. It shows up first in a rhythmic motif, a little short-short-long figure, in the first movement of both quartets. When it lodged in my brain I was not even sure which quartet it had come from. It’s the first thing you’ll hear in the Barber; when we get to the Bartók, you’ll have to wait all of a half minute.

Samuel Barber, String Quartet Opus 11, Movement 1, Meadowlark Quartet
https://youtu.be/trhbrQHXPsI?si=F-npEX2srpUIYlZi

Now listen to the opening of the Bartók, played here by the Tokyo String Quartet. Watch the
time stamp and note what happens at 0:29 seconds.

Bela Bartók, String Quartet No. 4, Tokyo String quartet
https://youtu.be/51Hi7CCYnMA?si=n69kKEjvpUIFm_8m

Certainly, the effect of this rhythmic motiv is quite different, but–even so! Was Barber listening
to Bartók? In 1928 Barber was 18 years old and studying at the Curtis Institute of Music, in
Philadelphia. That summer, he made his first trip Europe. Bartók meanwhile had travelled to
New York in February 1928 to premiere his Piano Concerto No. 1, returning to Hungary to
compose his 4th quartet. There was plenty of time between 1928, when Bartók’s 4th came along, and 1935 for young Barber to hear Bartók’s masterpiece and absorb something of his own road not taken.

The first movement of Barber’s quartet expands on the propulsive figure, and includes a swaying
chorale and a plaintive lyric melody, all developed in proper sonata form. It is followed by the
quartet’s famous second movement, the original incarnation of the Adagio for Strings. But the
first movement is not an introduction. It has its own strong personality and, at eight minutes
long, holds its own beside its better-known companion. The rhythmic first movement is given a
brief two-minute reprise, following the end of the Adagio without a break (be warned)!

Arturo Toscanini, then the conductor of the NBC Symphony, was impressed by Barber’s First
Symphony and requested a short orchestra piece. Barber responded by arranging the slow
movement of his quartet for string orchestra, calling it the Adagio for Strings. Upon hearing it,
Toscanini is said to have murmured, “Simplice e bella;” he went on to premiere it with the NBC
Symphony in 1938. Here is a recording by Toscanini himself, on 78 RPM vinyl; it’s scratchy but
cool. If the quality of the recording bothers you, there are many other choices on YouTube.

Samuel Barber, Adagio for Strings, NBC Symphony
https://youtu.be/kJUZ-ud5G60?si=jqPgXudISutmv6PJ

As a stand-alone piece for string orchestra, this is the version most of us have heard over the
years. It’s interesting how different the famous melody sounds when played by a quartet,
following the outspoken first movement. The first violin begins with a single hushed B flat, like
a step into another world. The texture clarifies. We hear each subtle change as we follow the
melody from one instrument to another. The orchestrated version is beautiful too, of course, but
it is by now so closely associated with funerals of the famous (Albert Einstein, Princess Grace of
Monaco, Barber himself) that it is hard to hear completely fresh. This is our chance.

Barber’s brief third movement sets up a deft transition to the Bartók. In another example of
shared DNA, both quartets share a symmetrical arch shape around a central slow movement.
Barber’s quartet, as we heard, forms an arch shape which only becomes apparent with the
concluding reprise, with its first and third movements arranged around the adagio second
movement. Bartók’s quartet is a more extended arch, with five movements, also arranged around
a central slow movement. The first movement is thematically linked with the fifth movement,
and the second movement with the fourth. The first movement is thrilling, with that rhythmic
motif, offbeat folk rhythms, overlapping slides and wild dissonances. Nearly a century later, it
still electrifies. The fifth movement is if possible even more intense. We could be in a Hungarian
village, transfixed by brilliant folk musicians playing their hearts out. The rhythmic motif is a
breathtaking conclusion.

The second and fourth movements are also linked; both are short, lively scherzos, about three
minutes each. The second movement is marked prestissimo, very fast, and con sordino, with
mute. “Muted” in this case does not necessarily mean quiet; the mute lends the sound an eerie
glassiness, without actually hushing it. It’s plenty loud at times, and we almost can’t listen fast
enough. The fourth movement is played completely in pizzicato, as if by a band of virtuoso folk
guitarists. The “Bartók pizzicato,” where a string is plucked so hard it snaps against the
fingerboard, shows up here too. Watch for the first one about a minute in, from the viola. When
all four players play an emphatic Bartók pizz at almost the same time, this quicksilver movement
is about to disappear.

In the center of this wild energy Bartók has placed the third movement, the keystone of the arch,
and marked it Non troppo lento, not too slow. Even if it were not still in our ears, how could we
not think of Barber’s Adagio? There is the same opening, a single held note by the first violin,
and a chordal entrance below it. The cello begins a lonely melody; it will be passed around as the
movement unfolds. This is a beautiful example of Bartók’s “night music,” a term he did not talk
much about but which he approved and used himself. Night is evoked by eerie dissonances and
by sounds that suggest birds, frogs, and whispering creatures of all kinds. I promise you’ll be
mesmerized, until the final two movements come and sweep it all away.

Here is another recording of the Bartók, with score, by the Keller Quartet, an ensemble of
Hungarian musicians with a strong affinity for Bartók’s music who have recorded all six of his
quartets. I found the score especially helpful for this brilliant, complex work.

Bartók String Quartet No. 4, Keller Quartet
https://youtu.be/3VFdzA5EbIY?si=RFFoNFYR7LEY9iY3

After two such epic quartets, we might expect something more relaxing after intermission, but
no. The Pacifica take it to the next level with Beethoven’s String Quartet in B flat Major, Opus
130, with its original conclusion, the Grosse Fuge, or Great Fugue. Opus 130 is the third of a set
of quartets commissioned by Prince Nikolai Galitzin in 1822, a commission which set the
composer on to his final project, the works known as the “late Beethoven Quartets.” The Grosse
Fuge was composed as the finale of Opus 130, but was later separated from it and is now known
as Opus 133. After removing the Fugue Beethoven wrote a new finale for Opus 130. It was the
last piece he completed before his death in 1827.

Many groups, including the Pacifica, have recorded the late Beethovens, but hearing them live
can be life-changing. Each one is a world unto itself. Opus 130 has six movements, and is in
some ways the most radical of them; ideas are stretched to the breaking point, or (perhaps)
beyond. The monumental first movement has more than a dozen tempo changes, from adagio to
allegro and back again. Listen too for the many subito pianos, Beethoven’s gesture of asking the
players to get louder and louder, then pulling out the rug of the crescendo by demanding sudden
quiet. The effect is breathless, astonishing, and very Beethoven. It also plays up the release when
he finally allows a crescendo to continue to forte. Please listen to the first movement before
going any farther. With the score you can literally see, as well as hear, each tempo change as it
comes along. (You can also spot the first subito piano in the very first measure.) “Tempo I,”
pronounced “Tempo primo,” which shows up on the third page, means “return to the first
tempo,” which is the slow adagio that began the movement. This is the Tokyo String Quartet.

Beethoven Opus 130
https://youtu.be/LbWwyle0bGw?si=hnOEaG-W-tGpVED_

The second movement is marked Presto, fast, and the fourth, Alla danza tedesca, is a German
dance. They are both scherzos that last less than three minutes; draw a breath while you can. The
third and fifth movements are slower, though Beethoven specifies that the third, Andante con
moto, is to be played poco scherzoso, a little jokingly.

When you’ve listened through the first four movements, pause to experience the true slow
movement, the Cavatina. The word comes from opera and means a “little song.” In a quartet
characterized by irony and detachment, Beethoven made the Cavatina unmistakably tragic.
Though in his youth he was known to mock listeners who wept over his music, he confessed that
he had only to think of the Cavatina to be moved to tears. About halfway through, the first violin
drops out for four long beats, while the lower strings begin a solemn procession of triplets. Over
it, Beethoven gives the first violin a passage that he calls Beklemmt–oppressed, anguished. You
will feel his tears, and perhaps your own.

Beethoven Opus 130, Movement No. 5, Cavatina, Tokyo String Quartet
https://youtu.be/LbWwyle0bGw?si=nc94wLkuWquat9UM&t=1554

The Cavatina is a famous movement, by the way. Carl Sagan insisted on including it on the
Voyager Golden Record, a phonograph album that was sent into space in 1977 on two unmanned
Voyager space probes. Along with selections such as Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No.2,
Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode,” and a few words from President Jimmy Carter, the Cavatina
was intended as a calling card to any extraterrestrials Voyager might encounter. It is now in
interstellar space; we await a response from the cosmos.

At its first performance, in March 1826, the Cavatina was followed by the Grosse Fuge, the one
piece of Beethoven’s music that has remained resolutely avant-garde to this day. All the late
quartets were taken as signs of incipient madness by some hearers, but the Grosse Fuge can still
hint that something has gone terribly wrong. Even the scale is alarming. By the end of the
Cavatina the quartet has been going on for about 30 minutes; the Grosse Fuge adds another
quarter of an hour of what can sound, at times, like chaos. But that was as Beethoven intended.
He worked hard on it, and went through twelve sketches before he was satisfied. Nervous about
its reception at the Schuppanzigh Quartet’s premiere, Beethoven waited for the performers at a
nearby café. “How did it go?” he asked when they arrived. Wonderfully, they said. Two
movements had been encored. “And the Fugue?” They exchanged nervous glances. Not so well,
they admitted. Beethoven erupted in anger. “And why didn’t they encore the Fugue?” he cried.
“That alone should have been repeated. Cattle! Asses!”

Soon afterwards his publisher Artaria began a campaign to have the Fugue spun off as a separate
piece, and a kinder, gentler alternative written. Beethoven took exactly one day to agree and
name his price, perhaps worried that the Fugue would sink the quartet he later called his favorite.
A new last movement was composed, Opus 130 was saved from the Fugue, and the Fugue was
saved as Opus 133. We will not hear the new ending, titled simply “Finale,” at this concert, so
you might take a moment to listen to it now.

Beethoven Opus 130, Finale
https://youtu.be/LbWwyle0bGw?si=mwGP2GXKvPIlATbg&t=1989

Now listen to the Fugue. There are many recordings on YouTube; I chose this one, by the
Guarneri Quartet.

Beethoven Opus 133, the Grosse Fuga
https://youtu.be/MVmL8U0PdmQ?si=0gUGVcGsFon3aV91

On Saturday night, at the end of an epic evening, the Pacifica will present the whole brilliant
quartet just as Beethoven intended, in all its challenging, contradictory magnificence. And be
assured: yes, the Fugue begins in violence, but it ends in beauty.

LIVE & LOCAL ONLINE!

Gary Hoffman & Chloe Jiyeong Mun

A Pre-Concert Blog by Elizabeth Morrison

Welcome to the first post of the Eureka Chamber Music Series Pre-Concert Blog!

For the 2025-26 season, we are replacing OLLI’s Live & Local Pre-Concert Talks with a Pre-Concert Blog – an expanded version of the notes in the playbill with links to music selections. The blog is updated two weeks before each concert. We hope you will enjoy reading about the music at your leisure, clicking on the links, and hearing as much of the music as you like. The post on the Pacifica Quartet concerts on November 15th and 16th will be posted on November 1, 2025.

Gary Hoffman and Chloe Mun’s Mainstage Concert on October 18 opens with Gabriel Fauré’s Élégie, a piece cellists carry close to our hearts. For many of us, it was the first significant piece we played, and its mixture of mournful, long-breathed melody and wild outbursts are part of who we are. It might take us back to the memorable performance of Fauré’s Piano Quartet No. 1 that we heard at the end of the 2023-24 season. Fauré’s emotional center of gravity is close to the surface in the quartet’s beautiful Adagio, and I was not surprised to learn it was his habit to begin each new composition by composing a slow movement. Refresh yourself on it here; the 2nd movement begins at 10:06, or enjoy the whole beautiful quartet.

Fauré, Piano Quartet No. 1

The Piano Quartet and the Élégie share the key of C minor and were written around the same time the quartet in 1879, the Élégie in 1883. The Élégie is so heartfelt that one feels it must have been written in response to a personal loss, and indeed the pedagogue Benjamin Zander declares confidently, in a master class on YouTube, that it was written following the death of his wife. In fact, it was not. Fauré composed it in 1880, three years before his marriage, intending it as the slow movement of a cello sonata that he never completed. He went on to publish it as a stand-alone piece which he premiered in 1883 with the cellist Jules Loeb.

Fauré may have felt that he showed his emotions too openly in his music. About another of his elegiac pieces, the Requiem in D Minor, he wrote, “My requiem wasn't written for anything–for pleasure, if I may call it that! Pleasure? Well, artists can say what they like; the truth is in the music. Neither the Requiem or the Élégie needs to be attached to a particular loss; they speak to the lacrimae rerum, the universal “tearfulness of things,” and so brings consolation to all grieving hearts.

After the Élégie’s premiere, the conductor Edouard Colonne asked for a version with orchestra. This Fauré duly supplied, and the premiere of this version was given in 1901 by Pablo Casals, with Fauré conducting. It’s possible to hear Casals play it on YouTube with an orchestra of 102 cellos (!).

Fauré, Élégie

It’s amazing, of course, but to me, the pairing of cello and piano is even better. The cello speaks most freely and openly with the piano, its continuo partner for centuries. Here’s cellist Jacqueline Du Pré with pianist Gerald Moore in a 1969 recording.

Fauré, Élégie

Gary and Chloe then take us to the very different world of Brahms’ Cello Sonata No. 2. This expansive piece comes out of the happy, productive summer of 1886 that Brahms spent at a resort just outside the city of Thun, in the Swiss Alps. In his 50s, Brahms had settled into the habit of doing his composing in the summer, at quiet resorts away from bustling Vienna, where he could take long walks in nature during the day and relax with friends in the evening. That same summer saw the birth of his second and third violin sonatas and his Piano Trio No. 3 in C Minor.

The lush, virtuosic writing of the cello sonata may have been inspired by Brahms’ love for the sound of a particular cello, that of Robert Hausmann, the cellist in Joseph Joachim’s string quartet. Brahms was known to carry certain sounds in his head: Joachim’s violin, his wife Amalie Joachim’s contralto, Richard Muhfeld’s clarinet, an obsession still to come. Hausmann’s cello should be added to the list; Brahms was to write his Double Concerto for Violin and Cello for Joachim and Hausmann the following year.

Oddly, at this point in his life, having written hundreds of pages of music for strings, including all his symphonies and most of his chamber music, Brahms still felt insecure about writing for any other instrument than the piano. When contemplating the Double Concerto he wrote to Clara Schumann, “I ought to have handed on the idea to someone who knows the violin better than I do…It is a very different matter writing for instruments whose nature and sound one only has a chance acquaintance with.” Again, artists can say what they like, but there is no trace of insecurity in this masterful work.

Brahms, Double Concerto in A Minor

Jascha Heifetz, violin
Emanuel Feurmann, cello
The Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, conductor, 1939

The first movement of the cello sonata opens, memorably, with tremolos in the piano, over which the cello enters immediately and forcefully. Within moments it has flown to the top of its register. The key of F major welcomes the cello’s lowest note, the open C string, and soon it too makes an appearance. The tremolos move from piano to cello, an exchange of colors that is almost thematic, a nod to the way the instruments can cross hands. The cello’s tremolo evokes bariolage, the baroque technique of creating color with rapid string crossings, and again casts doubt on Brahms’s alleged “chance acquaintance” with string writing. The movement traverses keys, including C major and A major, before returning sweetly to F major.

Here is a beautiful recording, from 1968, of Jacqueline du Pré and Daniel Barenboim.

Brahms, Cello Sonata No. 2
Jacqueline du Pré, cello

Daniel Barenboim, piano

This recording invites us to imagine an evening–New Year’s Eve, 1966, to be exact–and the start of a great love story. Jacqueline du Pré, then a passionate young cellist, met an Argentinian pianist named Daniel Barenboim at a party in London. Both lovers of chamber music, they immediately sat down to play this very sonata. Six months later, they were married. They played this sonata many times during the brief years of their lives together, before du Pré fell to multiple sclerosis and died at 42.

The second movement begins with two surprises. First, after the final F major chord Brahms moves the tonality up a half step to F sharp major. As you enjoy this heart-lifting effect, you might contemplate the very idea of a key with six sharps. Every note but B is raised a half step, leaving the cello without a single open string, and the pianist balancing on the black keys. It is not a common key, needless to say. Neither Haydn nor Mozart so much as dreamed of it. But Brahms certainly knew Beethoven’s 24 th piano sonata, one of his loveliest, dedicated to Therese von Brunsvik, and described by Beethoven as a “conversation with the beloved.” It might be going too far to call this an homage, but Brahms’s movement does share a rare quality with Beethoven’s: both are deeply romantic, but without a trace of sentimentality.

The other surprise of the second movement is that the cello begins in pizzicato. The notes are pitched low on the cello, and of course there are no resonant open strings in play. The effect is striking and original. In time the tonality settles to F minor, letting the cello’s resonance bloom, until the sharps return. We end in F sharp major, with more of those amazing pizzicati, like the heartbeats of the cello itself. Following the score is a good way to appreciate these magical effects. The second movement begins at 8:59.

Brahms, Cello Sonata No. 2

Jacqueline du Pré, cello

Daniel Barenboim, piano

The third movement, nominally a scherzo, has the unusual title Allegro appassionato, and is in a very passionate F minor, with an F major trio. The fourth and last movement is a lovely, singing allegro in F major, surprising in its own way after the complications that came before. The last movement, especially, tells us that Brahms was happy in his Alpine resort, where he declared that “the landscape was so full of melodies one has to be careful not to step on any.” No one could call this sonata an elegy! But when Gary chose to place it between Fauré’s Élégie and Dvořák’s elegiac Dumky Trio, one has to wonder what he sees beneath the surface. Perhaps this: there is a sense in which, once he was past 50, everything Brahms wrote was a sort of memorial. The future belonged to Strauss and Liszt, Debussy and Wagner, and by this time in his life, Brahms knew it. He felt himself to be the last of a line that stretched back to Bach, and he worried over what would be lost, even as he himself kept the line vibrantly alive.

After intermission Gary and Chloe are joined by Tom for Dvořák’s Piano Trio No. 4, Opus 90, known as the “Dumky” Trio. Written in 1891, five years after Brahms’ cello sonata, it is one of Dvořák’s most popular works, up there with his String Quartet in F Major, the “American,” which the Pacifica Quartet will play at their Concert and Conversation on November 16. It is also his most unusual. Instead of the customary four movements, it is composed of six sections, each one described as a “dumka,” a Ukrainian word whose plural is “dumky.” A dumka is a kind of Slavic folk ballad known for shifting between two moods, melancholy and exuberance. Like a mournful funeral that morphs into a gay “celebration of life” filled with memories of happy times, a dumka could be called an “elegy in musical form.” Many Slavic composers, including Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, Borodin and Prokofiev, have composed dumka, and Dvořák himself wrote a number of them, including the second movement of his Piano Quintet in A Major, Opus 81. The Dumka begins at 13:31.

Dvořák, Piano Quintet No. 2
Andreas Haaefliger, piano

Takács Quartet.

Although the Dumky Trio has six separate dumky, the first three are linked together and are played without pause, so they can heard as single movement. The fourth dumka thus becomes something like a slow movement, the fifth becomes the scherzo, and the sixth, the finale.

But rather than worry about the formal arrangement, as Dvořák apparently did not, why not just embrace each new section as it comes along? The dumkas are all warm, melodic and entrancing. Each section, with its changing emotions, can be heard as a meditation on the psychology of loss, reminding us that sadness can only be sustained for so long before, inevitably, the joy of life returns. Over and over, this music brings us back from the shores of melancholy to the pleasure of Bohemian folk life. Surely this is as Dvořák intended. He wrote his trio not long before he left to take up an appointment as music director of the new National Conservatory of Music of America, in New York, an appointment he resisted until his wife pointed out that the Conservatory proposed paying him four times the salary he received in Prague. His composition was a kind of love note to his native land as he left it, possibly forever (although in fact he returned after three years, too homesick to stay away.) He played his Dumky Trio to great acclaim on his 40-concert Farewell Tour, and audiences everywhere took it to their hearts. Now it’s our turn to do the same.