PRESENTING THE BEST OF MUSIC, DANCE, COMEDY AND ENTERTAINMENT FROM AROUND THE WORLD.

Transcription

1 2015 / 2016 SEASON PRESENTING THE BEST OF MUSIC, DANCE, COMEDY AND ENTERTAINMENT FROM AROUND THE WORLD. FUN EVENTS FOR KIDS AND THE ENTIRE FAMILY. JORGENSEN Center for the Performing Arts jorgensen.uconn.edu

2 Sunday, October 11, 2015 at 3:00 pm University of Connecticut School of Fine Arts Anne D'Alleva, Dean Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts Rodney Rock, Director presents Jerusalem Quartet Alexander Pavlovsky, violin Ori Kam, viola PROGRAM String Quartet in G Major, Op. 77, No. 1 Allegro moderato Adagio Menuetto (Presto) Finale (Presto) String Quartet No. 5 Allegro Adagio molto Scherzo (Alla bulgarese) Andante Finale (Allegro vivace - Presto) Sergei Bresler, violin Kyril Zlotnikov, cello Franz Josef Haydn Bela Bartók Intermission String Quartet in F Major, Op. 96 "The American" Allegro ma non troppo Lento Molto vivace Vivace ma not troppo Antonin Dvořák Please hold applause between movements David Rowe Artists 24 Bessom St., Suite 4 Marblehead, MA (781)

3 THE JERUSALEM QUARTET "An absolute triumph. Their playing has everything you could possibly wish for." BBC Music Magazine The Jerusalem Quartet, hailed by The Strad as one of the young, yet great quartets of our time, has garnered international acclaim for its rare combination of passion and precision. The ensemble has won audiences the world over, both in concert and on their recordings for the Harmonia Mundi label. In the 2015/16 season, the Quartet s focus will be on Beethoven and Bartók, with recordings of both composers quartets to be released in fall and early winter, respectively. They will return to North America in October, 2015 and April, 2016 for concerts across the U.S. In January and February 2016, they will present a unique series in which they perform all six Bartók quartets and all six of Beethoven s Op. 18 quartets over the course of four concerts in both Portland, Oregon and New York, NY. They will also perform Bartók s quartets in Hamburg, Madrid, London, and Tel Aviv, and will collaborate with pianist/conductor Andras Schiff for performances in London, Jerusalem, and at the Verbier and Salzburg Festivals. The Jerusalem Quartet is a record three-time recipient of BBC Music Magazine s Chamber Music Award, for their recordings of Mozart (2012), Haydn (2010) and Shostakovich (2007). The quartet s recording of Schubert s Death and the Maiden and Quartettsatz in C Minor was featured as Editor s Choice in the July 2008 edition of Gramophone, and was also awarded an ECHO Classic chamber music award in The Quartet records exclusively for Harmonia Mundi. In 2003, they received the first Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award, and were part of the first ever BBC New Generation Artists scheme between 1999 and The Jerusalem Quartet formed while its members were students at the Jerusalem Conservatory of Music and Dance. They quickly found a shared commitment to the music that has not only endured, but has propelled them to the highest level of performance. The Jerusalem Quartet appears by arrangement with David Rowe Artists and records for Harmonia Mundi.

4 PROGRAM NOTES STRING QUARTET IN G MAJOR, Op. 77, No. 1 Franz Joseph Haydn Born Mar 31, 1732 in Rohrau Died May 31, 1809 in Vienna Haydn, who is nicknamed the father of the string quartet, presumably wrote around eighty string quartets. His contributions gave the quartet form the shape, timbre, and technique it now has; in Haydn s hands the quartet evolved from a composition basically for a solo violin accompanied by three strings to a work of a highly organized combination of four strings who equally share four cogent parts in a sophisticated structure. In his later years, Haydn concentrated much of his energy on the string quartet form. When he returned to Vienna after his second journey to London in , he composed little other instrumental music. He wrote the six Erdödy Quartets, Op. 76 in 1797 and two of a set that were to number six Lobkowitz Quartets, Op. 77, in The Viennese nobleman Prince Maximilian Lobkowitz commissioned the Op. 77 quartets and Haydn dedicated Nos. 1 and 2, to him, but they are the only works of the projected larger set that were completed. Artaria in Vienna published them in September By 1803, Haydn finished two movements of another quartet, his last, which was published in 1806 as Op No one completely understands why Haydn did not finish this set of quartets. Music historians have suggested that Beethoven's early Op. 18 quartets, which were completed around the same time, with their major changes in quartet form, might have given rise to the opinion that Haydn s works would suffer in comparison; however, the composition and publication dates of the quartets call into question the plausibility of this hypothesis. Another possibility is that Haydn felt he could no longer continue composing quartets because of his failing health and age. That suggestion is more plausible but not decisive either, since Haydn s two completed quartets of the projected series were printed in 1799, four years before he composed the unfinished quartet. Many consider the first of the two Lobkowitz quartets, in G Major, to be Haydn's finest because of its supremely successful idiomatic writing for the four string instruments. The first movement, Allegro Moderato, in sonata

5 form, shows Haydn manipulating tonal materials rather than melodies, although the musicologist Bence Szabolcsi has identified its opening theme with an old Hungarian recruiting song called bokazo. The theme does have a march-like quality, and the movement is optimistic and full of energy. Here Haydn experiments a bit with form when he omits the second subject in the recapitulation, probably because he felt it had appeared fully enough in the development, and thus he gave himself the opportunity to write a full coda. Many consider the high point of the work to be its second movement, a contemplative and profound Adagio with unusual and formidable modulations. The secondary themes contain both dominant major and minor. The recapitulation seems to vary the exposition more than reprise it. The third movement, Menuetto: Presto, is vigorous, almost frenetic, and more like a scherzo than a traditional slower minuet; it has a contrasting trio. This movement demonstrates Haydn s inventiveness, especially in such a late work. The Presto finale is soaring and expansive. Arthur Cohn, who calls this one of the most informative and exciting movements in all of the quartet literature, comments that this movement is exemplary in that one can see how Haydn had advanced from phrased subjects to motives. Cohn goes on to say, Everything themes, development, and subsidiary material all stem from the opening theme. This theme, it is thought, was drawn from a Croatian round dance, a kolo, that has witty qualities. STRING QUARTET No. 5 Béla Bartók Born Mar 25, 1881 in Nagyszentmiklós, Hungary Died Sept 26, 1945 in New York Béla Bartók produced a series of six string quartets over the course of thirty years. These works, despite their unorthodoxies, continue and extend the Classical quartet tradition. The six quartets trace Bartók s developing attitude toward the unity of multi-movement compositions and inter-movement relationships in terms of themes and motives. Bartók dedicated Quartet No. 5 to Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, who endowed a branch of the Library of Congress, which had commissioned the work. Written between August 6 and September 6, 1934, it premiered at the Library performed by the Kolisch Quartet on April 8, It, like Quartet No. 4, written six years before, has a five-movement form

6 in a symmetrical arrangement where the first and fifth movements share materials; the second and fourth also are thematically and structurally related. The corresponding movements are not identical in either form or substance, but are constructed of subtly related ideas that move in similar tempi. The third movement stands alone as the kernel (Bartók s word) of the work, its heart, and all the other movements are arranged in layers around it. All the movements derive from a variation of a single basic motive even though the derivation is not always evident. This symmetry of movements flanking the kernel makes the music move through a curve that many music historians have called an arch. The vibrant Allegro first movement and the Finale, both sonata-like movements, bind the quartet together with a cyclic device: the fugue in the last movement is a development of the opening theme of the quartet. The first movement is based on a multiplicity of sharply differentiated themes: one a rhythmic figure hammered out in octaves and another interwoven in an intricate imitative counterpoint. When the ideas have been developed at some length, they are recapitulated in reverse order and melodically inverted, giving the movement the shape of a small arch at one end of the large arch that makes up the whole quartet. In this movement, two thematic complexes are joined by a transition that takes on almost thematic importance, something that Bartók pointed out in his descriptive analysis for listeners. He went on to point out the fact that key centers in the seven segments of the movement form the ascending whole tone scale. The second movement and the fourth movement are parallel in shape. The second is a slow nocturne built with an introduction, Adagio molto, followed by a main section that has three parts: Andante, Adagio and then Largo, after which there is a short coda. The fourth, Andante, also slow in tempo, like the second has a flavor of night music. Each has an ABA structure, and the fourth further expands and develops some of the ideas of the second. Actually almost everything in the second movement is duplicated in varied form in the fourth. Both have similar openings, beginning hesitantly with fragmentary themes, followed by folk-like principal subjects and nocturnal melodies in the central parts. The lyrical theme Bartók uses in the second movement reappears but in a more ornamented and expanded version in the fourth movement. At the center of the quartet is the ingratiating Scherzo, Alla bulgarese ( in the Bulgarian manner ), Vivace, a complicated web of rhythm and sound.

7 Bartók had first encountered the kind of uneven rhythms he uses here in 1912 in the course of his research on the folk music of Bulgarians living within the borders of Hungary. The music is written in measures of nine beats, which in conventional scores would be divided into three groups of three, but perhaps to offset the symmetries elsewhere in the quartet, Bartók here uses an uneven group of beats. This uneven distribution and the occasional silent beats, as well as a sense of syncopation, embody Bulgarian folk music but sometimes seem, to American ears, to suggest jazz. This movement has a central trio section in which the measure is expanded to ten beats of a constantly repeated, rapidly rushing figure that the first violin introduces; at the same time, the other instruments repeat a simple melody. The Finale last movement, in spirit and form (sonata form) like the first movement, uses many elements derived from the first movement but with a dance-like abandon. After an introduction, Allegro vivace, the music increases in tempo to Presto, and this regular meter continues to the end. Rigorously canonic, the lines closely follow each other at a distance of not more than a measure. The work pushes forward with enormous energy through dense contrapuntal sections, including even an exciting fugue, and relaxes only for a few Allegretto interludes, one, according to Bartók capricious and the other, which is a variant, indifferent. In the capricious one, the second violin articulates a little melodic subject and is accompanied by pizzicato chords, sounding deliciously out of tune. The indifferent variant is peculiar, and critics have hypothesized that it is an autobiographical touch, as here Bartók introduces a hurdy-gurdy tune, its melody taken from one of the movement s other episodes and set in augmented values. Another interesting quality is the use of silence, a dramatic feature that delivers significant aural impact and is used several times in this movement, each time providing intensity through its contrast. Throughout the rest of the movement, many passages of melodies are then imitated in inversion. The music accelerates and then hurls to an abrupt end. Throughout, Bartók pushes the skills of the string players to the limit. Going far beyond the conventional, he demands unusual multiple stops, unorthodox fingerings, several types of pizzicato and glissando and a battery of special effects. Yet the importance of the work is not the ingenuity of his writing or the novelty of his style but the strength, distinction and persuasion with which the composition is infused.

8 STRING QUARTET IN F MAJOR, Op. 93 ("American Quartet") Antonín Dvorák Born Sept 8, 1841 in Nelahozeves Died May 1, 1904 in Prague Dvorák studied the violin and organ as a child, and at the age of sixteen, left home to study in Prague. Five years later, he joined the orchestra of the National Theater as a violist (in those days an instrument usually taken up only by failed violinists), but he was almost thirty before one of his own major compositions was successfully performed. Then his career took off, and he eventually became a figure of world importance. He held a post as professor of Composition at Prague Conservatory, and was the recipient of honorary degrees from Cambridge University in England and the University in Prague; during his three-year residence in the United States, he was director of a conservatory in New York. Chamber music had an important place in Dvorák s life; many of his earliest works were quartets and quintets, modeled after those of Beethoven and Schubert which he played with his colleagues while developing his craft. One of the gifted and eager youths who flocked to Dvorák s classes in New York was an African-American musician, Henry Thacker Burleigh ( ), who was to have a distinguished career as a composer and singer. Burleigh spent long hours teaching the composer the spirituals and slaves work songs that Dvorák had in mind when he wrote, The future music of this country must be founded upon what are called Negro melodies. These beautiful themes are the product of the soil, the folk songs of America, and composers must turn to them. All great musicians have borrowed from the songs of the common people. Dvorák borrowed from them, but not by quotation. As he later explained, I tried to write in the spirit of the American folk melodies. After his first academic year, Dvorák happily left the noise and tumult that even then plagued New York, to spend the summer in Spillville, Iowa, a tiny town settled by Czech immigrants, where he felt very much at home. There, paradoxically, he composed two major works in his newly invented American style, this Quartet and the String Quintet, Op. 97. (The New World Symphony, which he had completely sketched in New York, was orchestrated in Spillville.) He arrived there on June 5, 1893, and between June 8 and 10, sketched the entire quartet, noting, It went quickly, thank God. I am satisfied with it. On the 12th, he began to write out the finished score, headed, Second composition written in America. On the 23rd, he completed the

9 work. As soon as parts were copied out, he and some friends played through it, and on January 12, 1894, the Kneisel Quartet gave the premiere in New York. The quartet s beauty and freshness of expression have less to do with America than with Dvorák s delight on discovering Bohemia, in Spillville. The syncopated rhythms and the pentatonic scales may possibly suggest the kind of melody that he learned from his African American students, or as is sometimes claimed, from the Native Americans who lived near Spillville, but he would probably not have learned enough of the latter s style to begin using it in so important a work only three days after his arrival there. The simple truth is that many of the music s characteristics that vary from the classic standards of Germany and Austria can also be heard in the folk music of Bohemia and in many works that Dvorák wrote long before he arrived in America. The Quartet opens, Allegro, ma non troppo, with a quietly joyous, expansive movement, whose original themes, clearly stated and defined, are classically organized and treated. The Lento slow movement is an extended melancholy duet for the first violin and cello, or sometimes the second violin, with a gently rocking accompaniment. Next comes a scherzo, Molto vivace, in which the predominance of a single theme makes the music seem almost to be a set of free variations. The warbling figure is a witty reflection on the song of what Dvorák called a damned bird, red, but with black wings, perhaps the scarlet tanager. The Finale is a rondo, Vivace, ma non troppo, a jolly romp that pauses only for a brief chorale of the kind that Dvorák improvised at the Spillville church organ. Notes Susan Halpern 2015