Program Notes
Brentano String Quartet
March 18, 2000, The Southern Theatre

About the Artists

Since its founding in 1992, the Brentano String Quartet has won numerous major prizes, among them the first Cleveland Quartet Award, the 1995 Naumburg Chamber Music Award, and the Tenth Annual Martin E. Segal Award.  The Brentano’s maiden performance in Great Britain at Wigmore Hall received the Royal Philharmonic Society Music Award for the most outstanding chamber music debut of the year 1997.  Since 1995, the Brentano has been quartet-in-residence at New York University.  In 1999, the Brentano became the first quartet-in-residence at Princeton University, and beginning in 2000, will serve the same capacity at London’s Wigmore Hall.  The quartet takes it name from that of Antonie Brentano, believed by many scholars to have been Beethoven’s “Immortal Beloved.”

Violinist Mark Steinberg, who holds degrees from Indiana University and the Juilliard School, was a recipient of the 1992 Lotos Foundation Award and is currently on the New York University violin faculty.

Violinist Serena Canin has degrees from Swarthmore College and the Juilliard School, teaches at Princeton and New York universities, and has toured with Music From Marlboro, the Brandenburg Ensemble, and Goliard Concerts.

Misha Amory, winner of the 1991 Naumburg Viola Award, holds degrees from Yale and the Juilliard School, currently serves on the faculty at Juilliard, and has performed at the Marlboro, Seattle Chamber Music, and Vancouver festivals, among many others.

Cellist Nina Maria Lee, winner of top prizes in the Saint Louis Symphony Young Artists Competition and the National Foundation for the Advancement of the Arts Talent Search, has degrees from Juilliard and has performed at the Marlboro and Tanglewood festivals.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)

Adagio and Fugue in C minor, K. 546 (composed 1783-1788)

Adagio
Fuga: Allegro

Among the familiar images we have of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is the youngster sitting at a keyboard with his older sister Nannerl.  So it stands to reason that his output would include a respectable number of works for piano, four hands.  More surprising is the fact that he completed only two pieces for two pianos:  the “Sonata in D major, K. 448” and the “Fugue in C minor, K. 426.”  This fugue dates from December 1783, and stands as one of Mozart’s most successful experiments in absorbing the music of J.S. Bach.  About a year earlier, Mozart had been introduced to Bach’s music as part of the musical circle around the Baron Gottfried van Swieten, who had brought some scores back to Vienna from Berlin.

Mozart became fascinated by Bach’s polyphony, arranged several Bach fugues for string ensembles, and wrote some of his own, many of which survive only as fragments.  The complex “Fugue in C minor” could never be mistaken for Bach, but in it one can hear Mozart both paying tribute and straining for Baroque grandeur.  At the time, Mozart attempted the beginnings of a prelude, but abandoned it after some 22 bars; the fragment survives as the “Allegro in C minor, K. Anhang 44 (426a).”

Some commentators have suggested that the original two-piano version of the “Fugue, K. 426” is unpianistic.  As if in acknowledgement, Mozart refashioned it for string quartet (or string orchestra) in June 1788, adding what he called “a short Adagio” as an introduction.  The resulting “Adagio and Fugue in C minor, K. 546” is thus an unusual addition to Mozart’s string quartet canon, nestled along with the 1786 “’Hoffmeister’ Quartet, K. 499” between the renowned “Six Quartets Dedicated to Haydn” (1782-1785) and the final trio of so-called “Prussian” Quartets (1789-1790).

Solemn and dignified, the “Adagio” recalls old French overtures with its dotted rhythms.  The four-part fugue, marked “Allegro,” is busy with all manner of Baroque effects:  stretto, inversion, augmentation.  Its subject embraces both a dashing and a resigned element, coming off as very Mozartean in spite of its vintage inspiration.

For more information about Mozart, we recommend: http://www.frontiernet.net/~sboerner/mozart/index.html

Franz Schubert (1797-1828)

Quartet in A Minor, D. 804 (composed 1824)

Allegro ma non troppo
Andante
Menuetto:  Allegretto
Allegro moderato

Only two pieces of Franz Schubert's chamber music saw publication during his lifetime: 1826's “Rondeau brillant, D. 895” for piano and violin (published as Opus 70) and this “String Quartet in A Minor, D. 804.”  Because the “A Minor” was the first of a projected set of three quartets, it originally appeared as Opus 29, no. 1.  Ironically, Schubert would write only two more quartets (D Minor, D. 810; and G Major, D. 887) before his death at the age of 31, though no evidence exists to suggest that these were intended as the remainder of Opus 29.

Early 1824 saw the composition not only of the “A Minor Quartet,” but also the “Octet, D. 803” and the “Quartet in D Minor, D. 810,” all three of which glance literally back to healthier and more prosperous times by quoting older Schubert works.  In a touch rarely found in Schubert's non-vocal repertoire, D. 804's first movement accompaniment precedes the melody.  This restless accompaniment brings to mind that of his song “Gretchen am Spinnrade, D. 118.”  The major-minor alternations lend this “Allegro ma no troppo” a special poignancy.

Schubert reached back to the incidental music he wrote for the 1823 play “Rosamunde” for the “Andante” theme, thereby bestowing upon the quartet its sometimes nickname, the "Rosamunde Quartet."  He apparently thought so highly of the tune that he used it yet again in 1827 in the third of his piano “Impromptus, op. 142.”  Although the “Andante” opens in the spirit of a rondo, it never quite develops that way, as the theme sounds but twice.

Yet again, for the opening of the minuet, Schubert refers to an earlier work, his 1819 setting of a Schiller poem “Die Götter Griechenlands, D. 677.”  Whereas this lends a modal flavor to the minuet, the major-mode trio offers a brief respite from the surrounding gloom.  More cheer at last arrives in the finale, another not-quite-rondo with an extended development in the middle.  Based on Hungarian dance rhythms, this “Allegro moderato” closes what some consider to be Schubert's understated chamber masterwork.

To explore Schubert's life and music in more depth, we recommend:
http://www.siuk.org.uk and http://www.classical.net/music/comp.lst/schubert.html.

Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951)

Quartet no. 3, op. 30 (composed 1927)

Moderato
Adagio
Intermezzo:  Allegro moderato
Rondo:  Molto moderato

In his own notes about the work, Arnold Schoenberg suggested a grotesque image that underlies his “Quartet no. 3.”  The image functions not in any programmatic way , nor as a means to reveal the work’s structure, but rather as an emotional touchstone.  He recalls being terrified as a child by the fairy tale “The Ghost Ship,” wherein a mutinous crew nails its captain through his head to the mast.  Knowing that seven decades worth of listeners blame Schoenberg for banishing consonance and harmony from the concert hall, it’s tempting to say that many of those listeners understand exactly how the unfortunate captain felt.  It’s also far too glib.

Now that the chronological odometer has rolled from the numbers that begin with “1” to those that begin with “2,” it may be long past time to make peace with the music of the twentieth century.  As no less an authority than Aaron Copland wrote more than forty years ago, “the music lover who neglects contemporary music deprives himself [sic] of the enjoyment of an otherwise unobtainable aesthetic experience.”

In spite of its harmonic and melodic innovations, the “Quartet no. 3” remains very much in debt to familiar classical forms.  It is in four movements, with a slow second movement and a rondo finale, and is permeated with variations.  Not necessarily variations as we think of them, where we can hear versions and permutations of a theme, but the IDEA of a melody that is altered rhythmically, harmonically, and structurally with each appearance.

In the “Moderato,” for example, the opening motif of eight eighth notes, over which the first violin plays the theme, appears in countless guises throughout the movement.  A second theme also in the first violin sounds a bit later.  The development threads these two themes and the opening motif together.  Schoenberg saw the “Adagio” as more of a rondo than a theme and variations because each “repetition” of the theme was so unlike every other one.

The “Intermezzo” is structured like a minuet and trio with through-composed repeats, although Schoenberg said that it also functioned as a rondo.  The minuet’s theme is in the viola with the second violin and cello contributing accompaniment.  The trio opens wildly but calms down before its even more wild repeat.  The finale, which is actually marked “Rondo,” also has elements of sonata form.  The rondo theme alternates with two different episodes before a brief development, followed by a recap with two more versions of the main theme separated by the first episode.  A lengthy coda brings back and plays with pretty much everything that’s come before.

Dedicated to the music patron Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, the “Quartet no. 3, op. 30” received its world premiere in Vienna by the Kolisch String Quartet on September 19, 1927.

For more background information on Schoenberg, we suggest: ,
http://www.schoenberg.org/

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

Grosse Fuge, op. 133 (composed 1825-1826)

Overtura (Allegro); Fuga (Allegro); Meno mosso e moderato; Allegro molto e con brio

  As the “Quartet in B-flat major, op. 130” was being premiered by the Schuppanzigh Quartet in Vienna on March 21, 1826, its deaf composer, Ludwig van Beethoven, sat brooding in a nearby tavern.  When the ensemble's second violinist and Beethoven's close friend, Karl Holz, joined the composer after the performance, he reported the public's enthusiastic reception.  The audience had demanded encores of the “Presto” and the “Alla danza tedesca,” Holz reported.  But the composer spat back, "Yes, these delicacies. Why not the fugue?"

The movement that has since become known as the “Grosse Fuge, op. 133” was unlike any finale composed up until that time.  Monumental and dissonant, the fugue was as difficult for its earliest performers to play as it was for its earliest listeners to comprehend.  In its construction (Beethoven marked it "tantôt libre, tantôt recherchée" or "partly free, partly studied"), it looked as much ahead to the symphonic poem as it did back to Baroque counterpoint.

After the first performance, at the urging of publisher Matthias Artaria, Beethoven reluctantly consented to the separate publication of the fugue and the substitution of a more traditional finale.  Although Beethoven was paid for his trouble, the new finale was destined to be the last piece he would ever complete, in November 1826.  He died the next March.

The “Grosse Fuge” stands on its own as one of the most astonishing quarter hours of music ever conceived.  Its opening has been compared to that of an opera overture; the manuscript, in fact, labels it "Overtura."  Four views of the fugal subject are aired:  the first, boisterous and accented; the second, rhythmically varied and quicker; the third, a slower legato version; and the fourth, broken down by the first violin.  The fugue proper bursts forth with an angular secondary theme in the first violin and the broken-down main idea in the viola.  After a long, wild ride, there is sudden quiet, a key change, and a much more subdued fugal passage.  The speed picks up again for a third fugal episode treating a rhythmic version of the main theme.  The coda suggests various new ideas in the manner of the "Overtura" before its abrupt close.

For further reading about Beethoven, may we suggest: http://www.classical.net/music/comp.lst/beethovn.html

Program notes by Jay Weitz, Consulting Database Specialist for music, OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Dublin, Ohio, and a contributing performing arts critic to the InnerArt Web Site.

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