Ying Quartet

Program Notes by Elizabeth Morrison

 

The Ying Quartet’s return to Humboldt County brings an exciting program: three pieces by the acclaimed American composer Billy Childs, along with pillars of the classical repertoire by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Johannes Brahms. It also comes with a twist. Rather than beginning with Mozart’s String Quartet in C Major, as they are doing elsewhere, they are beginning with Mozart’s String Quintet in C major. The string quintet is something of a specialty of our series. Though not often heard elsewhere, we have been treated to no less than five quintets in the last three years: one cello quintet, which adds a second cello to a string quartet,and four viola quintets, which add a second viola. Clearly, the quintet is important to our series. It’s time for a closer look.

 

Our fifth viola quintet is our first by Mozart. We began in 2023 with two by Brahms, Opus 111 in G major (1890), and Opus 88 in F major (1882), beautiful works that brought Brahms’ mature mastery to a well-established genre. In 2024 we heard Schubert’s Cello Quintet in C major (1828), a unique work that sprinkles viola magic on the cello while keeping the cello’s power as a bass instrument. Most recently we heard Mendelssohn’s two viola quintets, Opus 18 in A major (1827) and Opus 87 in B flat major (1845). Mendelssohn, writing half acentury before Brahms, was approaching a still fairly new combination; his quintets are fresh, melodic and elegant. Now, with Mozart’s K. 515 in C major, we have arrived at the headwaters. Joseph Haydn’s younger brother Michael wrote the first viola quintet in 1773, and while it may have inspired young Wolfgang, it was Mozart’s first quintet, K. 174, that really launched the genre. He composed six; the C Major is his third and was composed in 1787, when he was 31 years old.

 

There are people who regard Mozart’s viola quintets as his best chamber music. There are those who feel the same about Brahms, and many who place Schubert’s cello quintet at the pinnacle of all chamber music, period. But wait! Didn’t Joseph Haydn’s 68 string quartets establish two violins, one viola and one cello as the perfect combination? Yet Mozart, with a small nudge from Michael Haydn, didn’t hesitate to improve on perfection. What did he think a second viola would add? That’s easy: more middle! In a quartet, the viola and the second violin occupy a space midway between the first violin’s memorable melodies and the cello’s steadying harmonic foundation. They are the inner voices, the unsung heroes of every quartet. I can’t resist quoting Siegmund Nissel, the second violin of the Amadeus Quartet, who compared a string quartet to a bottle of wine. “The cello is the bottle,” he suggested. “The first violin is the label. The inner voices are the wine.” Mozart evidently felt the same. His six quintets are celebrations of the inner voice. It probably helped that he himself was a passionate violist. He was a virtuoso on violin, but when playing chamber music with friends, he chose, wisely, the role of the wine. The C Major quintet opens with a duet between the cello and the first violin, with a rising arpeggio in the cello answered by a flirtatious reply from the violin. The three (yes, three) inner voices accompany them through their five-bar phrases, as unified as the Rockettes. Then the violin and cello switch places. The mood clouds over. The unity of the inner voices gradually dissolves, as Mozart explores the possible combinations: violin with violin, viola with viola, first violin with first viola, cello with second viola, and so on. Finally he turns all five voices loose on the limitless possibilities for polyphony, harmonic shading, and color. This is a hugely satisfying movement, full of ideas and beautifully structured.

 

The second movement is a minuet built around a dynamic surprise, the subito piano–a sudden drop to a soft dynamic after a crescendo–that was to be a favorite Beethoven device. Here the effect is more teasing than dramatic. In the Andante third movement Mozart abandons the counterpoint for a romantic duet between the first viola and the first violin. This is not romantic music, it’s an out-and-out romance. Their leisurely exchange feels like the “conversation with the beloved” we all long for: intimate, playful, full of affection. There is nothing quite like it in the viola quintet literature, unless it’s the slow movement of Opus 29 in C major, Beethoven’s one viola quintet, which I secretly hope we will get to hear on the series as well. The final movement, a jolly Allegro, is lively and joyful. Let’s call it the party after the wedding.

 

Next on the program are three pieces by Billy Childs: Variation on a Rondo, Oscuro, and Agitato. Childs is a Los Angeles-based American composer, jazz pianist, arranger and conductor. Born in 1957, he has been performing professionally since he was a teenager, combining classical training (he has a degree in composition from the University of Southern California) with the distinctly American art form of jazz. He has been nominated seventeen times for the Grammy Award and won six times: twice for Best Instrumental Combination, twice for Best Arrangement Accompanying a Vocalist, and twice for Best Instrumental Jazz Album, including his most recent, for The Winds of Change, in 2024. He served as president of Chamber Music America from 2016 to 2022.

 

Jazz is, in a sense, chamber music at its best. Or perhaps it’s chamber music as it once was, with composition and improvisation closer together than they are today. The Billy Childs Jazz Ensemble has been described as an “all-star quartet that elevates improvisation to new heights of interactive virtuosity.” I’m looking forward to being thrilled. The three pieces were composed in 2022 but do not seem to have been commercially recorded, so they will be as new to me as to anyone but the Ying Quartet, or other fortunate souls. We are lucky that such music finds us here!

 

The evening concludes with Brahms’ first string quartet, Opus 51 No. 1 in C Minor. Brahms was 40 years old in 1873 when he finally published the two quartets that make up Opus 51. He often said that he had written and discarded 20 previous quartets. This is probably hyperbole; where would he have found the time? But it is true that he had already published both of his string sextets and two of his three piano quartets, and composed a cello quintet which he really did discard, after re-scoring it as the Piano Quintet in F Minor. (But why, oh why did he destroy the two-cello version? Like cellists everywhere, I want it back.) Brahms dithered so long with his string quartets because, well, Beethoven. Just as Beethoven had to navigate the world of Haydn and Mozart, Brahms always felt the shadow of Beethoven, especially with his symphonies and quartets. Indeed, Beethoven’s late quartets had taken the genre to such heights that it was publicly questioned whether the quartet had anything left to say. Robert Schumann and Felix Mendelssohn had written string quartets post-Beethoven, but they had not become the pillars of the repertoire that they are today. It was Beethoven whom Brahms had to worry about, and worry he did.

 

Yet his three string quartets, which include Opus 67 in B flat major, written just two years after the two quartets of Opus 51, are impressive enough for anyone. Admittedly they are less often played than the string sextets, which we heard at the ECMS Summer Festival, and the viola quintets, which were written after the quartets and are considered by many the pinnacle of his art. The quartets’ comparative neglect may go back to the days when the classical music world was divided into camps who followed either “Wagner the progressive” or “Brahms the classicist.” This split, which frankly no one bothers about today, was the basis of an essay by Arnold Schoenberg called Brahms the Progressive, where Schoenberg uses this very quartet, Opus 51 No. 1, to highlight Brahms’ harmonic innovations, claiming they are every bit as “progressive” as anything Wagner came up with.

 

But Brahms, it turns out, had finally settled on a way to write quartets that felt fully his own, by drawing on his formidable sense of formal logic. Opus 51 No. 1 is cyclic; all four movements use recognizably similar thematic material. The first movement begins with an upward-driving dotted-rhythm theme in the first violin, given a sense of urgency by restless eighth-notes from the three other voices. It has an intensity that barely lets up, even when the viola is left out to dry with two strange solos, held octaves lasting most of two full measures which read, to me, like a stunned reaction, or a held breath.

 

When the second movement, Romanze, begins, you will recognize the dotted rhythmic pattern from the first movement, while marveling at how different it sounds. It helps that the key has moved from C minor, Beethoven’s key of drama and angst, to A flat major, warm and comforting by contrast. The third movement, where you might expect a scherzo, is a gentle intermezzo, in the unusual time signature of 4/8, with pulsing 16th notes and a misplaced accent lending subtle confusion. The final movement, marked simply Allegro, returns to C minor and the driving intensity of the first. This is rather typical Brahms: intense outer movements, gentler inner movements.

 

This strict logic of the plan does lend the quartet a certain austerity, but let’s go back for a closer look at the Romanze. With his title Brahms has given us permission to think about his love life, or lack thereof. It was then 17 years since Robert Schumann had died. Someone, probably Brahms himself, had made the decision that he and Clara Schumann would go forward not as lovers, still less husband and wife, but as devoted friends and colleagues. Sigh. But Clara had given birth to eight children with Robert. Their third child, Julie, born in 1845, was everyone’s favorite. Beautiful, intelligent, and delicate, as she grew to be a young woman Brahms, inappropriately but perhaps inevitably, fell in love with her. Of course he said nothing, to her or to Clara, but his feelings shine in the Liebeslieder Waltzes of Opus 52, written during the summers when he was fussing over his quartet and dreaming of Julie.

 

Then, in May 1869, Clara gave her Johannes a piece of news: Julie was engaged to an Italian count. Brahms turned white and rushed from the house. Clara, shocked as well, grasped what had happened and rose magnificently to the occasion. It’s unlikely they ever spoke of it, but Brahms’ biographer, Jan Swafford, tells us that “Clara was very gentle with him for a long time.” As we hear this hard-won quartet and admire its formal beauty, we might still let the Romanze lead us into the farthest reaches of Brahms’ classical, stricken bachelor’s heart. Alas, the beautiful Julie just happened to be the daughter of Clara, his first great love. Logic, it seems, can only take you so far.