Jon Nakamatsu, Tom Stone,
Daniel Roberts and Amos Yang
Program Notes by Elizabeth Morrison
​
For the final concert of the season, we welcome violinist Daniel Roberts, of the Castalian Quartet, first-time guests Jon Nakamatsu, piano, and Amos Yang, cello, and ECMS artistic director and frequent collaborator Tom Stone. The four will play a kaleidoscopic program of trios and quartets by Bach, Beethoven and Brahms, with a delightful Haydn piano trio to open the weekend.
Joseph Haydn’s Piano Trio in F Major, published in 1766, was his first outing in the genre. The early trios do not always get the respect they deserve. The anonymous author of their Wikipedia page opines that they “are considered minor works and are seldom played except in the context of complete editions.” This is not true, and I suspect AI; no human would go along with such an assessment. You have only to call up the famous performance by the Beaux Arts Trio on YouTube for 15 minutes of Haydn bliss. Yes, the piano dominates; yes, the violin sometimes plays, as it were, second fiddle; and yes, the cello mostly doubles the piano’s bass line. But the effect is enchanting. Haydn’s imagination shines clear; each note feels inevitable, yet manages to surprise. The doubled bass notes are warmly supportive. The piano and the violin carry on a heartfelt conversation. It you are tempted to call this perfect piece of music “minor,” think instead of Debussy’s reminder: “There is no theory. You have only to listen. Pleasure is the law.”
The trio’s three movements include a stately opening Adagio, a lively Allegro molto, and a Menuet, a conclusion which would be unusual in one of Haydn’s string quartets or symphonies, but is common in the trios. All the movements are in F major except the Menuet’s F minor trio section, but within this framework Haydn varies the harmony and rhythm with great freedom. There are no dull moments. Even the cello, on duty to reinforce the piano’s bass line, has room to be expressive. Charles Rosen wrote, in his indispensable book Classical Style, “I have found cellists, when they are persuaded to play one of the trios, who are surprised to discover their part a fascinating one.” As we celebrate Luigi Tomasini, the violinist for whom Haydn created so many virtuoso violin parts, let us also think fondly of Josef Franz Weigl, Haydn’s cellist at the Esterházy court, for whom he had written his Cello Concerto in C Major just the year before. And let’s not forget Haydn himself at the keyboard! An undoubted pleasure for Prince Esterházy then, a supreme pleasure for us now.
Next Tom picks up his viola, Daniel Roberts joins him on violin, Jon departs the stage, and Amos stays for Beethoven’s 1798 String Trio in C minor, Opus 9 No, 3. More than 30 years have gone by since Haydn’s first piano trio. Beethoven, ever the pianist, has already composed three piano trios himself–more about them in a moment. He did not yet feel ready to take on the string quartet, knowing that Haydn and Mozart had made it the most important genre of chamber music. But he was ready to debut his string-writing chops with five string trios: Opus 3, Opus 8, and the three trios of Opus 9. Then, surprisingly, after the third Opus 9 trio, he never wrote another one. It seems that once he was launched on his grand project of string quartets, he never again wanted to do without a second violin.
Yet the string trio, too, is perfect in its own way. Haydn wrote many, but most of them were for two violins and cello; his Opus 8 trio was the first to call specifically for violin, viola and cello. Mozart’s late Divertimento for String Trio in E flat Major, K 563, is an undisputed masterpiece of the genre, and all of Beethoven’s pre-quartet trios, string and piano, display his early genius. All five string trios are strong and interesting, but the C minor in particular stands out. C minor, of course, held special meaning for Beethoven; he often used it for works of heightened intensity, drama and beauty. His third piano trio, Opus 1 No. 3, is also in C minor, and the two trios turn out to have much in common. Both open with a quiet unison passage sketching a C minor chord. The piano trio goes softer, down to pianissimo, and adds harmonic ambiguity. The string trio also stays quiet, but unsettles the rhythm with dramatic sforzandi, sudden outbursts that will characterize Beethoven’s string writing forever. Both trios include major-key slow
movements, third movement in C minor with C major trio sections, and outgoing finales in the original key.
Did it give Beethoven pause to rely on other performers to bring his compositions to life? The Opus 9 trios he entrusted to his favorite violinist, Ignaz Schuppanzigh, who brought in the violist and cellist of his Razumovsky Quartet for the premiere. The players must have delighted in their complexity and the independence of each voice. In the drama of the first movement, the violin and viola play off each other constantly; I don’t want to say they compete, but you might! The second movement promotes the cello, who had plenty to do in the first movement, to full partner, I would almost say leading voice, in a high-minded Adagio in C major that is a hymn to decency. The scherzo is all about sforzandi: listen for three in a row, three more, then seven, one after the other. High anxiety! The trio waves a gay little flag, but the surrender does not last; the obsessive outbursts return before finally fading away. The last movement, marked Presto, concludes Beethoven’s string-trio career with a head-spinning, trio-spanning whirlwind.
After intermission all four players at last appear together in Brahms’ Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor, Op. 25. This is a monumental work, majestic, challenging and rewarding. The first of Brahms’ three piano quartets, it was composed in 1861, during a happy summer spent in a quiet, leafy county suburb of Hamburg called Hamm. At 28 years old, Brahms had just moved out of his jangly, distracting family home in the city, and the quiet and space he found in Hamm came as a great relief. One of the first products of his country idyll was this quartet.
The opening, played quietly by the piano, is an austere procession of quarter notes, played in triplicate across two octaves in the middle of the keyboard, unadorned, with not even a hint of harmony until the fourth bar. It is the kind of music that to this day divides the world into a persistent dichotomy: people who admire Brahms, and people who adore him unreservedly. So watch your own reaction as the piece gets under way. Do you think, “Pure genius!” or “Wait, was that the melody?” Whichever feeling wells up, stand by. There is a long way to go. The tune, if that’s what it is, gets taken up by the cello, then the viola, then the violin. Harmony arrives. The key of D minor is established. The rhythm starts to swing with syncopation. The dynamic swells to fortissimo, and you realize that four instruments can put out an amazing amount of sound, if one of them weighs half a ton and has 230 strings. This movement, almost 14 minutes long, is a show in itself, built of the original four-bar phrase, an obsessive sixteenth-note
fragment that eventually takes over, and a couple of additional themes, some of them even whistleable.
The second movement, where we would expect a scherzo, is called an “Intermezzo,” a term apparently suggested by Clara Schumann on the grounds that Brahms had slowed and expanded the movement so much it could no longer be called a “joke.” If you’re a Brahms admirer, this movement could turn you into a lover. The three string instruments are muted, and the cello, and later the viola, ground a rhythm that shape-shifts constantly. The C minor Intermezzo gives way to a fleet trio section in A flat major, before the C minor returns and ends, surprisingly, in C major. Thus we are set up for a gorgeous slow movement in E flat major. The tempo marking is Andante con moto, and the form is something called a “developing variation,” a term coined (admiringly) by Arnold Schoenberg and very much based on this work by Brahms. Unlike classical variations, which vary the melody or the bass line, developing variations are generated organically from fragments and motifs of the theme itself. It might sound complicated, but it’s
easy to hear in this movement; the theme flows like a great river, changing in character as the banks change, yet never losing its integrity.
Speaking of Schoenberg, he loved this piano quartet, but complained that many of its details got lost in the piano part. In 1937 he orchestrated it note by note for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, using an enormous orchestra and a percussion section that included xylophone, glockenspiel, snare drum, cymbals, tambourine and triangle. Listen to it on YouTube! It’s amazing–but with all due respect, Schoenberg was wrong. Just as Brahms wrote it, and even without a triangle, you won’t miss a single detail. When our four performers launch the fourth movement, the famous Rondo al Zingarese that has never yet failed to bring an audience to its feet, you’ll be convinced. It’s all right there.
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Balourdet Quartet 2026
A Pre-Concert Blog by Elizabeth Morrison
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It is a joy to welcome the Balourdet Quartet back to Humboldt County. It’s been just a year since
their March 2025 community residency, when they spent a week giving outreach concerts and
educational workshops all over Humboldt County, culminating in two superlative concerts as
part of the series. The centerpiece of the project was five performances of Steve Reich’s
Different Trains; they also played works by Erwin Schulhoff, Felix Mendelssohn and Ludwig
van Beethoven. This year they are performing two programs of revered classics by Schubert,
Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and Brahms, and a new quartet, Paul Novak’s 2024 impossible
inventions, whose title evokes Bach and whose music suggests a science-fiction future that may
already be here.
The opening work, Schubert’s Quartettsatz in C Minor, is a single movement for string quartet,
composed in December 1820 as the first movement of a quartet Schubert either put aside and
never got back to, or abandoned for some other reason. (He did write 40 bars of an Andante
second movement, but nothing more.) It stands by itself in his oeuvre, four years after the early
Opus 125 #1 and 2, and four years before the first of his three final quartets, Opus 29 in A Minor.
The manuscript of the Quartettsatz, like much of Schubert’s work, disappeared after his death,
but eventually made its way into the possession of Johannes Brahms, who edited it, had it
published, and arranged for it to receive a belated premiere in 1867. Even then it was not
immediately recognized for the great work it is. That took time, but it happened, and today it
holds a valued place in the string quartet repertoire.
Schubert composed an enormous amount of music in his brief lifetime, including more than 600
songs, and seemed to possess an inexhaustible source of melodic invention. But even for him, the
melody at the heart of the Quartettsatz stands out. Let’s hear it now. The beautiful tune begins
close to the beginning, at 0:37.
1. Schubert Quartettsatz
https://youtu.be/VpdS2rwMz1M?si=s9wqNe6aiAcoXwgK
The Melos Quartet
Part of what makes this melody so special is the unexpected jump of a fourth in the middle of the
tune, when the first violin goes from A flat to D flat at 0:44. The effect is heart-lifting, and I have
always wondered if Arthur Sullivan didn’t lift the trick from Schubert for his very best song,
“The sun whose rays are all ablaze,” in The Mikado. In the song, the lift is on the words, “We
really know our worth, the sun and I,” at 1:27.
2. Norma Burrows as Yum-Yum
https://youtu.be/lpVPGk257Tc?si=OY4yNzhSWzU6fCuo
We get to hear the lift twice in the Quartettsatz, and it happens twice in the song as well. The
second time comes with the words, “We’re very wide awake, the moon and I.” Sullivan caught
the emotion, equal parts vanity and innocence, and gave it to his character Yum-Yum. Be the
first person to agree with me! By the way, the timing works: Brahms had published the
Quartettsatz just in time for Sullivan be inspired by it. And you know what they say about
imitation! It’s the sincerest form of flattery.
Another feature that makes the theme so appealing is its extreme contrast with the agitato
opening. Only Schubert could make the first violin, alone, in pianissimo, sound this fraught.
Foreboding builds as each instrument enters in turn, with relentless 16 th notes that culminate in a
stormy fortissimo chord, in a remote key but arranged to suggest F minor. Things quiet down,
but the mournful mood remains until the transcendent melody takes our breath way. Then, just
when we’ve dropped our guard, the sturm und drang of the opening comes back, scaring us half
out of our seats. And so it will go. Contrasts, thrilling and unsettling, continue right to the last
bar. Are we left with beauty or dread? Or both?
Next on the program is impossible inventions, by the young Chicago-based composer Paul
Novak. It’s dedicated “with gratitude and warmth to my friends Angela, Justin, Ben and Russell”
–in other words, to the Balourdet Quartet themselves, whom Novak goes on to call “an
extraordinary ensemble that defies the laws of physics.” It is a compact (about 13 minutes) piece
in four movements, played without pause, each named for an invention deemed, for the moment,
impossible. The first movement imagines the quartet as a “faster – than – light – machine,” the
second as “quantum – clockwork,” the third as an “anti – gravity – machine,” and the fourth as a
“cyborg – falling – in – love.” (Is that last really impossible? I can’t be alone in wondering when
my phone will start to love me back.)
Composers are within their rights to eschew pauses, but it does challenge listeners who like to
follow the program and know where they are. If you’re one of them, and want to prepare, the
best way is to use the miracle that is YouTube to listen with the score,. Watch here, and I’ll alert
you to the movements.
3. The Balourdet Quartet plays Novak
https://youtu.be/p3mooqcHzbU?si=ZhfkEhXlVuw8S5a3
Movement 1, “faster – than – light – machine”.
0:00, ends at 4:51
Movement 2, “quantum – clockwork”
4:52, ends at 6:23
Movement 3, “anti – gravity – machine”
6:24, ends at 9:00
Movement 4m “cyborg – falling – in – love”
9:01, ends at 13:22
The first movement is the longest, at five minutes, and it is amazing how many notes (16 th notes,
like the opening of the Quartettsatz) Novak has managed to fit into that short time. He adds
instructions like “fake gliss as needed” (pretend to slide) and “scratch tone” (self-explanatory).
There are speedy chromatic passages that would challenge groups who have not played Different
Trains as often as the Balouret.
When Russell, the cellist, in the midst of a quartet-wide passage of “scratch tone”, puts down his
bow and begins a series of pizzicato Fs, you’ll know we have arrived at “quantum – clockwork.”
The passage of space-time is marked by pizzicato notes with no discernible interest in letting us
know when it’s teatime. Another passage suggests the players “ricochet ad lib,” so watch their
bows bounce. When everyone has succumbed to ricochet fever, Ben, on viola, leads the quartet
into the third movement, “anti – gravity – machine,” which involves pizzicato notes marked
“resonant, ringing.” The cello gets a melodic line at last; marked “freely, expressive; soaring,” he
floats from the bottom of the cello’s range to about as high as cellos ever go, personifying – anti
– gravity. The movement ends with a long ricochet passage for the two violins and cello, marked
“out of time.” Gravity, if not time, returns. Angela, Justin and Russell put on mutes, while Ben,
unmuted, takes us into the fourth movement, “cyborg – falling – in – love.” It’s a “gentle,
luminous dance,” with the three muted instruments marked “delicate, flautando, with minimal
vibrato,” and the viola marked “yearning.” The melody hovers on the outer edge of human
emotion, but I do now sense how a young cyborg might feel. After all, it’s spring.
After these two exciting openers comes Beethoven’s Opus 18 No. 3 in D Major, from his very
first set of string quartets. As the 19th century began, the young composer, age 29, had been
living in Vienna for seven years. He had conquered the city as a performer and was its most
successful pianist. But, though no one knew it yet, his worsening hearing was already calling his
future as a performer into question. He, at least, knew that his future had to be composing. He
had already begun by publishing piano and string trios, sonatas for violin, cello and piano, one
piano concerto, a string quintet, and even a horn sonata. His Septet Opus 20, for four strings and
three winds, had been an enormous success. But string quartets were more serious than any of
these, and the time had come to approach that mountain. Propitiously, his patron Prince
Lichnowsky had recently given him a quartet of string instruments, including a Guarneri violin
and cello and an Amati violin, plus a handsome annual stipend of 600 florins and a commission
for six quartets.
Beethoven approached the commission with great care. He had been filling his sketchbook with
quartet ideas for several years. Now he took the time to study the quartets of Mozart and Haydn,
even copying out the whole of Haydn’s Opus 20 No.1 by hand so as not to miss a detail. The
result was Opus 18, a set of six quartets that have held the attention of the musical world ever
since. Each one is a gem. They are clearly related, but each has its own unique personality. We
are lucky to be hearing the third, which for whatever reason is played less often than No. 1, with
its “Romeo and Juliet” slow movement, and No. 4, in Beethoven’s great key of C minor. Check
them out here if they are not familiar:
4. Beethoven Opus 18
No. 1 in F Major, Movement 2 (Romeo and Juliet)
https://youtu.be/GfKZxWqexuo?si=y00S_zwMUWAXXX7i&t=518
5. No. 4 in C Minor, Movement 4, (Allegro)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQ-oZvbdwxA&t=1111s
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Opus 18 No. 3, it turns out, was actually written first, though the order was changed at
publication. It’s Beethoven's very first quartet! It opens with the unusual interval of a 7th in the
first violin (think “There’s a place for us,” from West Side Story, to hear a minor 7th in your
head. For a major seventh, think, “Maria.”) The unstable interval hangs in the air for a moment
before it begins to unwind and transform, wending its way through a masterful development to a
fortissimo ending in D major. The second movement moves, unexpectedly, to B flat major for a
swinging, singing movement marked Andante con moto. Inspired by the Arianna Quartet’s
lesson on the six “pairs” possible in a quartet (upper string with lower, inner voices with outer,
and the diagonal pairing of first violin with viola and second violin with cello), this movement is
a good one for noticing how each pair bringing its own character and color to the music. The
third movement, pitched somewhere between a Minuet and a Scherzo (Beethoven just calls it
“Allegro”) plays games with the key signature. We’re safely back to D major, but there are A
sharps and E sharps in the first phrase, suggesting far-off keys without actually going there. We
move to D minor for the trio section, then return once more to this surprising chromaticism. The
last movement is marked Presto, and if it reminds you of the Mexican Hat Dance, you aren’t
alone. Don’t let the fact that Beethoven had no knowledge of Mexican folk music distract you!
Like the calculus, some things are just in the air, waiting to be discovered. When the movement
takes off, knowing the faster – than – light Balourdet, hold on to your hats!
6. Opus 18 No.3 in D Major
https://youtu.be/uLSRSilSzhY?si=8a83UAR1hlaGDbfa
After intermission, the Balourdet Quartet once more becomes a viola quintet, a transformation
they pulled off at their March 2025 visit, when Tom Stone joined them to play Felix
Mendelssohn’s Opus 18 Quintet in A Major. Now they complete the set with his second quintet,
Opus 87 in B flat Major. You might recall that the first quintet was written in 1826, when
Mendelssohn was just seventeen, something that seems almost impossible until you remember
that he wrote his famous Octet in 1825, age sixteen. Opus 87 was composed in 1845, and is one
of the last pieces of chamber music he wrote; only his last string quartet, Opus 80 in F Minor,
written in 1847, is later. Here’s the first quintet, to refresh your memory.
7. Mendelssohn, Opus 18 Quintet in A Major.
https://youtu.be/ZdO6o5VqWR8?si=keGQdzAaMUIq6ibA
Do you hear the spring-like youth? At this concert we’ll hear a work of Mendelssohn’s maturity,
and it’s every bit as transporting as those of his youth. He is now all of 36, if you can imagine.
8. Mendelssohn, Opus 87 Quintet in B flat Major.
https://youtu.be/lh8CyFpro2I?si=I2zcKcHcGIyzZTHg
The opening takes us back to the agitato mood of the Quartettsatz and impossible inventions,
with restless sixteenth notes behind the first violin’s forthright statement. The more tranquil
second theme, too, is seldom truly calm, as eddies of triplets keep the surface always in motion.
The second movement, marked Andante Scherzando, is not quite like the gossamer scherzos we
have come to expect; his reverence for Bach shows up in fugue-like passages which somehow
manage to maintain Mendelssohn’s lightness of touch. Interestingly, this movement could almost
have been the slow movement – it’s not much faster than the Andante slow movement of the
second quartet of Opus 44, for example. But perhaps as a mark of his maturity, for the third
movement he has written something quite different: a true slow movement, with a tempo
marking of Adagio e lento, two words that both mean “slow.” The mood is solemn, tragic and
beautiful. The key is D minor, but a beautifully resigned theme emerges in D major, played by
the cello with support from the second viola – a perfect pairing not available in a string quartet. It
is the heart of the quintet, and very moving to listen to, seemingly able to encompass any
tragedy. The fourth movement is a genial companion to the first movement, full of energy,
inspired by counterpoint, with agitation calmed, tragedy accepted, and the muse of music
reigning supreme.
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Arianna String Quartet
A Pre-Concert Blog by Elizabeth Morrison
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It is with great pleasure that we welcome the Arianna String Quartet back to Humboldt County. This season they have selected a fascinating and varied program. Their Mainstage Concert begins with Haydn’s Opus 20 No. 5, followed by Béla Bartók’s Quartet No. 2, and concludes with the lush, romantic Quartet No. 3 by Ernö Dohnányi. At the Sunday Concert and Conversation we will her Dmitri Shostakovich’s Quartet No. 3, composed in 1946 and speaking profoundly to the present day.
Opening with Haydn is always a strong move. His quartets are, if I may once more reach for my food metaphor, the staff of life to the chamber music world. They are numerous (68 at the present count, with a few early ones having been declared spurious), lively, inventive, witty and heartfelt. Haydn’s music is approachable by amateur players, although you do need a nimble first violinist, while professional musicians can bring all they have and still wish for more. The six quartets that make up Opus 20 were composed in 1772 and are Haydn’s fourth complete set. (String quartets were commonly published in groups of six, until Beethoven broke the mold by writing just three Opus 59s.) Haydn was 40 years old, in the prime of life, one of the leading composers in Europe, and with a secure position as Kapellmeister at the court of Prince Nikolaus Esterházy. He had a friend and colleague at court, the Italian violinist Luigi Tomasini, who could bring to life anything he dreamed up; Tomasini was the inspiration for those virtuoso first violin parts that continue to dazzle two and a half centuries later. Curious about Tomasini? Check him out! He composed, too!
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Luigi Tomasini and Haydn
https://grokipedia.com/page/luigi_tomasini
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Haydn now had all he needed to take full possession of his genius, and with the Opus 20 quartets, he did. Music scholar Ronald Drummond has written that “the six quartets of Opus 20 are as important in the history of music, and had as radically a transforming effect on the very field of musical possibility, as Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony had 33 years later.” Indeed, they were crucial to Beethoven; before he embarked on his own first set of six quartets, he studied the scores of the Opus 20s and copied out at least one of them, so as not to miss a detail. (Brahms was also a fan, and owned Haydn’s autograph score.) Every Opus 20 quartet is rich with innovations, in particular the move towards full participation of all four voices. Cellists feel fully seen, perhaps for the first time in a string quartet, in the opening movement of Opus 20 No. 2. As a cellist accustomed to waiting patiently for a brief moment of glory, this is amazing.
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Haydn, Opus 20 No. 2 in C Major, Quatuor Mosaïques
https://youtu.be/vX_hZPRRERA?si=aNJPiBFaL5YWmc9l
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The Opus 20s are especially rich in writing for the inner voices, the viola and second violin, whose musical threads creates the tapestry. They also make extensive use of counterpoint, something of a dying art at the time; three of the six Finale movements are fugues, including our Quartet No. 5. Above all, they are infinitely expressive. If you find yourself in need of two and a quarter hours of refreshment, you could do worse than to listen to them all the way through. This is a link to the elegant, very classical Hagen Quartet, based in Salzburg, Austria and founded originally by four siblings.
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Haydn Opus 20 (all,) Hagen Quartet
https://youtu.be/fOX4CVHxPOE?si=rY3r97s0DoUwwqQt
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Opus 20 No. 5 is arguably the prize of the set. Its key of F minor was one that Haydn found inspiring. He chose it for his famous F minor Variations for Keyboard and placed it at the center of The Seven Last Words of Christ, a composition he considered his masterpiece. The first movement opens somberly, but listen for the way the austere theme changes as its harmonic underpinnings move, within the first minute, to A-flat major. This is more a study in shifting emotions than in tragedy, a day of dramatic weather rather than a full-blown Romantic storm.
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Haydn Opus 20 No. 5, Movement 1, Quatuor Mosaïques
https://youtu.be/s9olhyCmosw?si=MWeN1h5VdsBoo9v8
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The second movement is a Minuetto, but an undanceable one, devoid of the regular 8-bar phrases needed for a courtly dance. The trio section is harmonically sweet, but is written in 5-bar phrases–again, no dancing is encouraged, or possible.
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Haydn Opus 20 No. 5, Movement 2
https://youtu.be/s9olhyCmosw?si=uaByIIjbE65BNQIC&t=636
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The slow movement, a flowing adagio in F major, finds Haydn in an operatic mood. The first violin plays the part of a Baroque coloratura soprano, ornamenting freely, one eye on her encore, with Tomasini at the top of his game.
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Haydn Opus 20 No. 5, Movement 3
https://youtu.be/s9olhyCmosw?si=RneEhAsSSmOd2Ywm&t=941
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The Finale returns to f minor, as the three lower voices, having provided ungrudging support throughout the slow movement, are released on their own recognizance to a dense, serious fugue, the ultimate in independent voice writing. If the first fugue subject sounds familiar, it’s because
Handel used it in Messiah for “And with his stripes we are healed,” and Mozart borrowed it from Handel for the “Kyrie” in his Requiem. Haydn asks the players to maintain a hushed dynamic throughout the fugue, until a final outburst brings the quartet to an emphatic end.
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Haydn Opus 20 No. 5, Movement 4
https://youtu.be/s9olhyCmosw?si=5Cio5hVxz2hfFZKJ&t=1296
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The angular fugue subject and the constantly shifting dissonances of Haydn’s Finale set up the next piece, Béla Bartók’s Quartet No. 2, perfectly. It was composed between 1915 and 1917, a consequential century and a half after Haydn’s Opus 20, and there’s no disrespect to Haydn’s stature as father of the string quartet to notice how far Bartók has taken the invention. Bartók wrote six quartets over a 30-year span; we were fortunate to hear the Pacifica Quartet play his fourth quartet in November; with luck we will hear the rest of them in seasons to come. His first quartet dates to 1909, when he was 28, and is one of the most arresting first quartets ever written.
It showcases his growing fascination with Hungarian folk music, as it moves from a “funereal” (his word) late-Romantic first movement to a much more upbeat folk-ish conclusion. (It also charts his recovery from a disappointing love affair.)
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Bartók, Quartet No.1, Hungarian String Quartet
https://youtu.be/xaQvPhVvQaY?si=_DNvg0U__W0z4vRh
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At around the same time, Bartók took time off from composing to go out into the countryside with his friend and colleague Zoltán Kodály to study and record folk music, first in Hungary, then farther afield, in Slovakia, Transylvania, Turkey, and North Africa. These field expeditions were halted by the onset of World War I in 1914. Bartók was now in his mid-30s, and having been sickly from childhood, was declared unfit for military service. He returned to composing, working on his second quartet as the war raged on.
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This quartet showed the profound influence of his immersion in folk music, which went far beyond providing him with a trove of quirky new tunes. The strength, traditions and pathos of peasant life, embedded in the music, showed Bartók a way forward that did not so much overthrow tonality as transform it. You will hear this very clearly in the first movement, which is clearly tonal, but very different from the tonality of Haydn, Beethoven and Brahms. It begins with a single note in the cello; the inner voices set up the harmony and rhythm, and the first violin enters with a poignant leaping figure in the second measure; the cello plays it again in the seventh measure, at rehearsal number 1. Keep your eye on this figure, and it will guide you through one of the most enthralling aural experiences imaginable. Kodály, who understood his friend’s music well, perceived the quartet’s three movements as a series of “life episodes;” the first of which described “peaceful life.”
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Bartok’s “Peaceful Life.”(Quartet No. 2, Movement 1)
https://youtu.be/-S2PwQgp3vE?si=yCZ6OIJAM7q5hLSk
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The second movement, Allegro molto capriccioso, lively and very whimsical, lies at the center of an arch structure, a single fast movement between two slow movements. Bartók called it a “kind of rondo;” Kodaly said it represented “joy.” It is emphatic and relentless, showing the influence of Arab melodies and rhythms from his time spent collecting folk music in Algeria.
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Bartok, “Joy.” (Quartet No. 2, Movement 2)
https://youtu.be/-S2PwQgp3vE?si=s9zZWmcr-dqyB2-f&t=700
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The final movement, marked Lento, slow, seems suspended in time. The music is spare and exhausted, reflecting, perhaps, the desolation of wartime. Kodály heard it as “suffering.” It brings the quartet to a quiet, sighing close.
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Bartok’s “Suffering/Sorrow.” (Quartet No. 2, Movement 3)
https://youtu.be/-S2PwQgp3vE?si=5tif3SpdsZI4s-tO&t=1216
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The concert resumes after intermission with another Hungarian composer, Ernö Dohnányi. His Quartet No. 3 in A minor, in a late-Romantic style, sounds as if it were composed years earlier than the Bartók we just heard, but in fact it was composed almost a decade later. We are going forward in time, not backwards. Dohnányi, born in 1877, was just four years older than Bartók, and the two composers began writing quartets at about the same time. Dohnányi’s third quartet, written in 1926, was contemporaneous with Bartók’s Quartets No. 3 and 4. Not that they would seem that way, then or now!
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Dohnányi was at that time an important and influential conductor, pianist, and composer who chose to continue the tradition of German music, especially that of Brahms, who appreciated and promoted the younger composer’s work. Although his path diverged significantly from that of Bartók, they became friends and colleagues early and remained so throughout their lives. As conductor of the Budapest Philharmonic Orchestra, Dohnányi was a strong supporter of Bartók’s
music, and he conducted many of Bartók’s premieres, especially the pieces he considered more accessible. (Bartók’s Four Orchestral Pieces, which Dohnányi premiered with the Budapest Philharmonic in 1922, are a good example, as one of his last pieces that sound anything like
Debussy.)
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Bartok, Four Orchestral Pieces, BBC Symphony
https://youtu.be/jC91qiRlmAE?si=9J8S4QevJCTzAPDp
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Both Dohnányi and Bartók moved to America in the 1940s, and both died there, Bartók in 1945 and Dohnányi in 1960. They had significant political differences in their lifetimes; in addition, Dohnányi passed the pinnacle of his renown, while Bartók’s stature continued to grow. Nevertheless their mutual respect endured. When, later in his career, Dohnányi began to include Hungarian folk elements in his own work, the intriguing suggestion was made that his compositions were offering an “interpretation” of Bartók. Whatever this might mean in practice, it does provide an approach to Dohnányi’s third quartet. It is in three movements. The first, marked Allegro agitato ed appassionato, is full of drama and is clearly put together with care for form and construction. It’s Hungarian, obviously, but closer to Brahms’ Hungarian Dances than to the ethnomusicology of Bartók and Kodály.
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Dohnányi, String Quartet No. 3, Movement 1, Fine Arts Quartet
https://youtu.be/uHs1IE9yrOQ?si=X8kTuhKcwPXD83pU
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The second movement, Andante religioso con variazione, is an inventive set of variations that begin with a quiet, hymn-like theme and become ever more, let’s call it Bartók-ian, as they go on.
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Dohnányi, String Quartet No. 3, Movement 2
https://youtu.be/uHs1IE9yrOQ?si=XQQAGR11AOZgdt3O&t=705
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The third movement Vivace giocoso, lively and playful, finds Dohnányi indeed interpreting Hungarian folk music to the world that still revered Brahms. Hearing Dohnányi’s third quartet right after Bartók’s second, with Haydn’s F-minor masterpiece still ringing in our ears, enlivens them all. Haydn, after all, Austrian-born as he was, spent perhaps half his life in Hungary, at the court of the Hungarian Esterházy Princes. Hungarian folk music was in the very air he breathed. There is more than one way to be Hungarian!
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Dohnányi, String Quartet No. 3, Movement 3
https://youtu.be/uHs1IE9yrOQ?si=v_l7Cn9J7dUerk5S&t=1318
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-Previous Concerts-​
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Tears of Gold
A Pre-Concert Blog by Elizabeth Morrison
Laura Krumm, mezzo-soprano
Simon Barrad, baritone
Eric Zivian, piano
and Tom Stone, violin/viola
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Welcome to the third post of The ECMS Pre-Concert Blog! The Blog is an expanded version of the printed Program Notes; here I have the space to add music links and history, and to gossip freely about the musicians, in hopes of making the concerts even more fun for us all. Two brilliant singers, an amazing pianist who is a composer himself, and our own resident violin/violist Tom Stone, are joining together to create a special experience. The series has has enjoyed many vocal concerts over the years, going back to the days of the founders, Pearl and Robert Micheli. Pearl was a singer and pianist herself, and the vocal concerts they brought were always highlights. The tradition continues with music from the art song repertoire, selected by the artists to show the full range of the genre. Pearl would be absolutely delighted.
What exactly is an art song? The boundary can blur, but it is generally defined as a musical setting, for one or two voices and piano, of a poem by an admired poet. The “art” part refers to both the words and the music; it is the marriage of the two that elevates a song to art song status. Every composer we know wrote songs, sometimes a lot of them. Beethoven’s single largest genre was actually the folk song arrangement (he made 179 of them, mostly of Scottish folk songs), but his output of art songs is a significant, and often overlooked, part of his oeuvre. I can’t resist sharing one of them here, a setting of Mignon’s song “Kennst du das Land?” (Do you know the Land?), from Goethe’s novel Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship. If you have time, you could even listen to all six of the songs in Beethoven’s Opus 75. There could be no better introduction.
Beethoven, “Kennst du das Land?”
https://youtu.be/s5VnpeNn_54?si=nLGISk7LMWDuke78
Natalie Pérez, mezzo-soprano
Jean-Pierre Armengaud, piano
Art songs are chamber music just as much as the small instrumental ensembles we love, but today we are far less likely to find them on a chamber music series. This is a pity, as I’m sure Pearl would agree. Barbara Meister, in her An Introduction to the Art Song, writes that art song concerts have “a degree of intimacy seldom equaled in other kinds of music.” The performers, she goes on, “must communicate to the audience the most subtle and evanescent emotions as expressed in the poem and music.” The words, in other words, are crucial to our enjoyment. In an ideal world we would have read the poems beforehand, consulting translations if our French and German were less than stellar. The translations will be available at the concert, but if you would like to read them beforehand, drop me an email (elizabethmorrison@mac.com) and I will be happy to send you a copy.
The art song came to prominence in the nineteenth century and is deeply entwined with the Romantic movement. More intimate than an aria, more complex than a pop song, more literary than a folk song, the art song was in a sense a product of the Industrial Revolution. A new middle class had come into being with the desire to have music in their homes, but without the wealth they’d need to maintain court musicians. The ability to sing and to play piano oneself, particularly among women, became a status symbol showing one had arrived. We might recall Jane Austen in Pride and Prejudice gently satirizing Lady Catherine de Bourg, who remarked that, while she had not actually studied piano, “if I had ever learnt, I should have been a great proficient.” Composers moved to fill this demand. They would choose poems that spoke to them, interpret them in music, and make them available to a booming market of cultivated amateurs. Called Lieder in German and mélodies in French, art songs began in homes, moved to cafés where people gathered around the piano to sing, and gradually evolved into a concert genre.
Franz Schubert, who was born just at the end of the 18th century, ushered in the Golden Age of the art song. He wrote an astonishing 600 of them in his 31-year life and introduced them, the ink still wet, at gatherings of friends called Schubertiades. He is said to have written a song the moment he encountered a new poem, occasionally writing seven or eight in one day. We will hear four of his songs at the Mainstage Concert on Saturday, but let’s warm up our ears with one of his best-known songs, “Die Forelle,” (The Trout.) The poem is by Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart, and Schubert set it no fewer than five times, finally using the tune as the basis of the variations movement in his Trout Quintet for four strings and piano. Doesn’t the bright little phrase that opens the song suggests the movement of a trout rising from the stream? Be sure to look at the translation as you listen: Schubert’s music follows the emotions of the poem closely, light and gay until suddenly it isn’t. His sympathy is clearly with the fish. This is the great lyric baritone Dietrich Ficher-Dieskau with his long-time pianist Gerald Moore.
Franz Schubert, “Die Forelle”
https://youtu.be/NF9DrUXowBo?si=zZGnRrZIRWkja8O3
Dietrich Ficher-Dieskau, baritone
Gerald Moore, piano
Robert and Clara Schumann and their friend Johannes Brahms, all admirers of Schubert, took up the torch and left remarkable troves of art songs as well. Robert wrote around 250 Lieder; Clara left perhaps 30, but some of hers may have been lost. Brahms composed over 200. Indeed, when Brahms died, the consensus was that he would be remembered primarily as a composer of songs. French composers took up the form in the mid-nineteenth century, transforming it in the process, as we will see in the concert. Art songs were (and still are) written in English as well; we will hear songs by two British composers, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Rebecca Clarke, and American composers Charles Ives, William Bolcom and Eliza Gilkyson. Sunday’s concert also includes two songs by Ukrainian composers. Here’s one to whet your ears–a beautiful song by Vasyl Barvinsky for soprano, piano and violin. The words are from the Bible, from Galicians 1. Tom will join Eric and Laura on violin at the Sunday concert.
Vasyl Barvinsky, “Song of Songs”
https://youtu.be/uNhdDFIvQyI?si=wXgqw6o3Kh7OOPDh
Katie Manukyan, soprano
Robert Frankenberry, piano
Robert Zahab, violin
On Saturday we will hear 21 songs by nine composers, all but one from the nineteenth century. The songs are grouped by language, with first group in French and the second in English. After intermission the singers move into German, the native language of the art song, for nine Lieder by Schubert and the Schumanns. First, though, we will hear seven mélodies, poems by French poets set to music by the French composers Gabriel Fauré and Henri Duparc. The first song is for the two singers with piano; the title “Pleurs d’or,” tears of gold, gives its name to the concert, and suggests that we have an evening of sweet melancholy in store (this is mostly true). The poem is by the symbolist Albert Samain, and the words invoke exquisite images of nature. Where Samain finds golden tears in hanging flowers, starry nights, and springs lost in mossy rocks, Fauré’s music perfectly captures the precious sadness of the poem.
Next the singers each take the stage for a solo set. But an art song is never for singer alone;
there is always a piano present, not as an accompanist but as a partner. Putting music to the
words of the poem is only half of the composer’s task. Or less than half, because the piano is
there for everything that is not in the words: the poem’s aura, its atmosphere, its allusions.
Robert Schumann, a great explainer of music in his day, wrote that “the voice alone cannot
reproduce everything or produce every effect.” He points to the development of his instrument,
the piano, and instructs that “together with the expression of the whole, the finer details of the
poem should also be emphasized; and all is well so long as the vocal line is not sacrificed.” Our
pianist Eric Zivian will have three solo pieces to himself, but will be on stage every moment, in
both concerts, an indispensable part of every song. Let’s take a moment to listen to one of his
pieces: this is Robert Schumann’s “Warum?” (Why?), which asks the question so clearly, one
wonders why we ever need words.
https://youtu.be/iK5W2PZnRFc?si=icQ_I86Emt7-pqby
Gabriele Tomasello, piano
Laura’s songs includes three settings by Fauré of poems by Charles Grandmougin, a poet better known as an opera librettist. His “Poèmes d’un jour”(poems of one day) are almost an opera in themselves. In the first, “Recontre,” (meeting,) the poet falls in love with a gentle- eyed stranger, while admitting that he does not know her very well. In the second, “Toujours,” (always), he falls into a fury when she orders him to shed his passion and leave her; you will hear the outrage in Fauré’s music. In the final song, “Adieu,” the poet grows philosophical, remarking that, “alas, even the longest loves are short.”
Simon’s set brings us three songs by Henri Duparc, each from a different poet. Duparc was a contemporary of Fauré’s and a student of César Franck; we would know more about him if he had not succumbed to mental illness in his late 30s, stopped composing completely, and destroyed most of his music. Luckily, he saved out a small trove of 17 exquisite art songs. The first, “L’invitation au voyage,” sets a famous poem by the scandalous poet Charles Baudelaire, whose book Les Fleurs du mal (The flowers of evil) influenced generations of modern poets. The “invitation” of the title is to a dreamy sensual paradise, where “Là, tout n’est qu’ordre et beauté / Luxe, calme et volupté!” There, nothing but order and beauty, luxury, calm, and pleasure. Sigh.
After two more songs by Duparc, the singers change to English and join Eric in “It was a Lover and his Lass,” a setting by Ralph Vaughan Williams of words by William Shakespeare, no less. The source is his comedy As You Like It; in Shakespeare’s day it had music by the Renaissance composer Thomas Morley. After the hyper-refinement of Baudelaire and Grandmougin, Shakespeare’s “With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino” is a fresh breeze. Eric bolsters the transition with “Cortège,” a piece for solo piano by the British composer and violist Rebecca Clarke. Best known for her chamber music and her beautiful viola sonata, Clarke also wrote nearly 60 songs. Laura will sing “A Dream” and “The Cloths of Heaven,” both settings of poems by the Irish poet William Butler Yeats. I remember so well hearing Clarke’s truly incredible song “The Seal Man” at a concert at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Bayside sometime in the early 1990s. Does anyone else remember this? It was my introduction to her music and I fell in love with her on the spot. The words are by John Masefield, of “I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky” fame, from a story called “A Mainsail Haul. “Them that lives in water, they have ways of calling people.”
Rebecca Clark, “The Seal Man”
https://youtu.be/Y1FHA0rpmT8?si=3WRnDc6exphRoHbR
Emily D’Angelo, soprano
Sophia Muñoz, piano
Simon returns with the very brief, haunting “Remembrance,” by the American composer Charles Ives, from Ives’ own collection, 114 Songs. He follows it by “Love in the Thirties” by William Bolcom, a song featuring a lively interchange between two characters, “Dad” and “Kid.” Bolcom’s bracing music shows another place an art song can take us, closer to operatic verismo than to the romantic melancholia of a French café. The first half concludes when Tom joins Eric and both singers in Vaughan Williams’ “The Last Invocation,” a setting of a Walt Whitman poem from Leaves of Grass.
After intermission, the language moves at last to German for nine Lieder, with music by Schubert and the Schumanns and poems by eight different poets. Simon begins with Schubert’s exciting “Auf der Brück” (At the bridge), from a poem by the German Romantic poet Ernst Schulze. The singer’s words are addressed to his horse (!), urging him on through the dark forest. The piano’s music creates the horse–a signature Schubert move. Next is Robert Schumann’s “Zwielicht” (twilight), from a poem by Joseph von Eichendorff. It was composed in 1840, the year of Robert’s long-desired marriage to Clara, the year he wrote so many songs it is called his Liederjahr (year of song), the year he was as happy as he would ever be. Yet the poem he chose is, frankly, paranoiac. Twilight, in Art Song World commonly a time for romantic longing, is here a time for mistrust. Keep your favorite fawn safe from hunters, the poet advises, and don’t forget that your dearest friend is plotting against you.
Simon then brings us a song by Clara Schumann: a setting of Die Lorelei, by Heinrich Heine. Another fascinating choice. This brave, talented woman, a prodigious pianist who supported her family with her concerts, fell in love with Robert when she was nine, raised eight children with him, lost him to mental illness when she was 37, and until she met Brahms never looked at another man, chose to set a poem about a cruel beauty who sits on a mountaintop above the Rhine, singing, combing her golden hair, and luring men to their death. A lesson from our excursion into the art song: a composer chooses a poem, and reveals something hidden in her heart! Laura’s last set brings three more Schubert songs, each more entrancing than the last.
Pay special attention to Suleika 1; Brahms called it “the loveliest song ever written.” When he composed the song, Schubert believed he was setting a poem by Goethe. But it turns out it was actually written by an actress and dancer named Marianne von Willemer, with whom he was having a passionate affair. Goethe published it under his own name. How art-song is that?
Franz Schubert, “Suleika 1” Brahms’ favorite song
https://youtu.be/ZMGVg0-CiFQ?si=XYyR0vQCN59ohHuO
Anne Sophie von Otter, mezzo-soprano
Bengt Forsberg, piano
The concert comes to a marvelously romantic conclusion when both singers join Eric for Robert Schumann’s Die tausend Grüsse, (a thousand greetings). Romantic ecstasy at last, Schumann style!
https://youtu.be/QC2hbB-Jrs0?si=gcB_lmRUnhLSB5pz
Júlia Várady, soprano
Dietrich Ficher-Dieskau, baritone
Harmut Häll, piano​​
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Pacifica Quartet
A Pre-Concert Blog by Elizabeth Morrison
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Welcome to the second post of the Eureka Chamber Music Series Pre-Concert Blog!
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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.
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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.”
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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Bela Bartók, String Quartet No. 4, Tokyo String quartet
https://youtu.be/51Hi7CCYnMA?si=n69kKEjvpUIFm_8m
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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.
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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)!
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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.
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Samuel Barber, Adagio for Strings, NBC Symphony
https://youtu.be/kJUZ-ud5G60?si=jqPgXudISutmv6PJ
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Bartók String Quartet No. 4, Keller Quartet
https://youtu.be/3VFdzA5EbIY?si=RFFoNFYR7LEY9iY3
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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.
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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_
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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.
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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.
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Beethoven Opus 130, Movement No. 5, Cavatina, Tokyo String Quartet
https://youtu.be/LbWwyle0bGw?si=nc94wLkuWquat9UM&t=1554
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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.
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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!”
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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.
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Beethoven Opus 130, Finale
https://youtu.be/LbWwyle0bGw?si=mwGP2GXKvPIlATbg&t=1989
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Now listen to the Fugue. There are many recordings on YouTube; I chose this one, by the
Guarneri Quartet.
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Beethoven Opus 133, the Grosse Fuga
https://youtu.be/MVmL8U0PdmQ?si=0gUGVcGsFon3aV91
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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.
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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.
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Fauré, Piano Quartet No. 1​​​
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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 (!).
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Fauré, Élégie
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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.
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Fauré, Élégie
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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
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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.
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Brahms, Cello Sonata No. 2
Jacqueline du Pré, cello
Daniel Barenboim, piano
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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.
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Brahms, Cello Sonata No. 2
Jacqueline du Pré, cello
Daniel Barenboim, piano
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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 DvoÅ™ák’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 DvoÅ™ák’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 DvoÅ™ák’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 DvoÅ™ák 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.
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DvoÅ™ák, Piano Quintet No. 2
Andreas Haaefliger, piano
Takács Quartet.
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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 DvoÅ™ák 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 DvoÅ™ák 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.
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