Back to ListTHE STRING QUARTET AS MEMOIR
Many composers wrote their most personal and autobiographical works for string quartet. The intimacy of the medium and the homogeneity of the four string instruments seemed to invite composers better known for broad, orchestral statements, like Smetana and Sibelius, to bare their souls in almost painfully honest ways. Felix Mendelssohn’s final quartet, Op. 80, is an anguished requiem for his beloved sister, Fanny. Berg’s Lyric Suite, while it refers to the music of Wagner and Zemlinsky, also contains a hidden program, discovered years after the composer’s death, revealing an illicit love affair. At the center of Beethoven’s monumental A-minor quartet lies the “Heiliger Dankgesang,” a transcendent work that describes the composer’s illness and recovery. And Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s haunting 8th Quartet finds the composer recalling, from Krushchev’s Moscow, the Klezmer music of his youth in Poland. We open these programs with Schubert’s Quartettsatz, the first movement of a work the composer abandoned, showing this poetic composer at his most intense and vulnerable.
A
1. Schubert: String Quartet No. 12 in C minor, D. 703 “Quartettsatz” (1820)
2. Berg: Lyric Suite (1925-6)
--intermission--
3. Sibelius: String Quartet in D minor, Op. 56 “Voces intimae” (1908-9)
--OR-- Smetana: String Quartet No. 1 in E minor “From My Life” (1876)
B
1. Schubert: String Quartet No. 12 in C minor, D. 703 “Quartettsatz” (1820)
2. Sibelius: String Quartet in D minor, Op. 56 “Voces intimae” (1908-9)
--intermission--
3. Beethoven: String Quartet No. 15 in A minor, Op. 132 (1825)
C
1. Mieczyslaw Weinberg: String Quartet No. 8 (1966)
2. Mendelssohn: String Quartet No. 6 in F minor, Op. 80 (1847)
--intermission--
3. Beethoven: String Quartet No. 15 in A minor, Op. 132 (1825)
--OR-- Sibelius: String Quartet in D minor, Op. 56 “Voces intimae” (1908-9)
--OR-- Smetana: String Quartet No. 1 in E minor “From My Life” (1876)
THE STRING QUARTET AND LITERATURE
Philosophers, composers, and linguists have long debated the relationship between music and literature. We explore the connections between these art forms, showcasing compositions which took their inspiration from literature (like Janácek’s first quartet, based on Tolstoy’s novella “The Kreutzer Sonata” or Beethoven’s Opus 18, No. 1, whose second movement was inspired by the tomb scene from Romeo and Juliet), as well as works whose influence was felt by authors of future generations (like Beethoven’s Quartet, Op. 132, which features prominently in Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus, as well as Aldous Huxley’s Point Counterpoint). The music of Dutilleux owes much to Marcel Proust’s investigations into the nature of memory, and Proust’s life and work were also closely linked with Ravel’s. Finally, Huck Hodge’s upcoming quartet, written for Daedalus and commissioned by the Fromm Foundation, will draw on the writings of Jorge Luis Borges, Carl Jung, and the contemporary Buddhist poet Ko Un.
1. Beethoven: String Quartet No. 1 in F major, Op. 18, No. 1 (1798-1800)
2. Janácek: String Quartet No. 1 “Kreutzer Sonata” (1923)
--OR-- Henri Dutilleux: Ainsi la nuit (1973-6)
--OR-- Huck Hodge: New Work (2015, available spring 2016)
--intermission--
3. Beethoven: String Quartet No. 15 in A minor, Op. 132 (1825)
MODERN CLASSICS
Chamber music tends to be the musical medium in which innovation and creativity are most strongly demanded by the art form, and most enthusiastically embraced by the audience. These programs feature some of the most forward-looking composers throughout history, in works that have become central to the string quartet literature.
Berg’s Lyric Suite, while composed according to the principles of Schoenberg’s twelve-tone system, combines elements of post-Wagnerian tonality with the new “atonality,” and has become perhaps the most influential work of the Second Viennese School. Ravel, whose only string quartet failed to win the Prix de Rome in 1905, created a mathematically precise, culturally diverse, and harmonically experimental musical language that remains expressive and seductive today. Bartók’s second quartet points the way to his mature style, in which he courageously follows through upon his discoveries about the harmonic and rhythmic idioms of folk music to invent a compositional style all his own. Dutilleux’s Ainsi la nuit explores memory and emotion through hidden harmonies and evocative sound colors. Janácek, in his first quartet, searches for a way to portray the psychological torment of a doomed young woman in music. Stravinsky’s “Three Pieces” is a pivotal work, written just after “The Rite of Spring” (1913) and just as he was beginning work on “Les Noces” (completed 1923). We also include the first published quartet of Beethoven – the great emotional range prefiguring the Romantic era; the economy of means so inspirational to the modernists – as well as a new work by the adventurous American composer Huck Hodge, written for us.
A
1. Bartók: String Quartet No. 2, Sz. 67 (1915-7)
2. Janácek: String Quartet No. 1 “Kreutzer Sonata” (1923)
--OR-- Henri Dutilleux: Ainsi la nuit (1973-6)
--OR-- Huck Hodge: New Work (2015, available spring 2016)
--intermission--
3. Ravel: String Quartet (1903)
B
1. Bartók: String Quartet No. 2, Sz. 67 (1915-7)
2. Berg: Lyric Suite (1925-6)
--intermission--
3. Stravinsky: Three Pieces for String Quartet (1914)
4. Ravel: String Quartet (1903)
C
1. Beethoven: String Quartet No. 1 in F major, Op. 18, No. 1 (1798-1800)
2. Janácek: String Quartet No. 1 “Kreutzer Sonata” (1923)
--OR-- Henri Dutilleux: Ainsi la nuit (1975-6)
--OR-- Huck Hodge: New Work (2015, available spring 2016)
--intermission--
3. Ravel: String Quartet (1903)
CELEBRATING THE 100TH BIRTHDAY OF HENRI DUTILLEUX
Henri Dutilleux (1916-2013), one of the titans of 20th and 21st century music.
REMEMBERING DUTILLEUX
This program brings together Dutilleux’s sole work for string quartet, the Proustian “Ainsi la nuit” (“Thus the Night”) with works from composers he acknowledged as critical influences, Ravel and Beethoven. (He described Beethoven’s Late Quartets as what he would want with him on a desert island.)
1. Ravel: String Quartet (1903)
2. Henri Dutilleux: Ainsi la nuit (1973-6)
--intermission--
3. Beethoven: String Quartet No. 15 in A minor, Op. 132 (1825)