Download Program Notes – Quartetto di Cremona Salon Concert, Mar 16, 2013

Program Notes – Quartetto di Cremona Salon Concert, Mar 16, 2013
Copyright © 2012 by Jason S. Heilman, Ph.D.
The string quartet may have been Viennese by pedigree,
but Europe has always been a cosmopolitan crossroads
of musical styles, and tonight’s program shows the complicated web of national influences that can be found
within a single genre. The first piece sees the Italian
composer Ottorino Respighi taking up the string quartet
genre and infusing it with the latest harmonies out of
France. Ludwig van Beethoven, on the other hand, looks
to Italian lyricism rather than Germanic rigor in one of
his first quartets; for a composer famous for his driving
intensity, Beethoven’s Third String Quartet is an interesting revelation.
Quartet in D Major
composed in 1907 – duration: 28 minutes
Ottorino Respighi (1879–1936)
Best known for his trilogy of sweeping and vivid orchestral tone poems—Fountains of Rome (1916), Pines of
Rome (1924), and Roman Festivals (1928)—Ottorino
Respighi was a composer split between the twin influences of the ancient and the modern. Born in Bologna
into a musical family, Respighi studied violin, viola, and
piano at the conservatory there, and won his first job
after graduation in far-off St. Petersburg as principal
viola of the Russian Imperial Theatre Orchestra for its
Italian opera season. While in St. Petersburg, Respighi
also had the opportunity to study composition briefly
with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, the renowned master of
orchestration. Rimsky-Korsakov’s influence can be heard
not only in the rich variety of tonal colors that characterized Respighi’s orchestral works, but also in the confidence with which he composed idiomatically for the individual instruments. After only one season in Russia,
Respighi returned to Italy to continue his composition
studies at Bologna. It was then that his career took him
into chamber music; in 1903, he became the violist of the
Mugellini Quintet, a Bolognese piano quintet with the
composer Bruno Mugellini (1871–1912) at the keyboard.
Respighi toured with that group until 1908 before moving to Rome. In 1913, he was appointed professor of
composition at the Conservatorio di Santa Cecilia there,
a post he held for the remainder of his life.
Stylistically, Respighi’s music fits in well with his French
contemporaries Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel, but
he was also profoundly influenced by his research into
music of the past, particularly the works of the late Renaissance and early Baroque era. Although Respighi
completed eight string quartets and quartet movements
in his lifetime (including Il tramanto, a setting of
Shelly’s poem “The Sunset” for mezzo-soprano and quartet) only two of these works were written during his
years with the Mugellini Quintet. His string quartet
movement and his first two complete quartets (curiously,
the only quartets he numbered) all date from his student
years. In 1906, Respighi wrote one of his earliest expressions of neo-classicism: his Quartet for Four Viols, a new
composition for the ancient violas da gamba of Monteverdi’s time. The very next year, he completed a modern
String Quartet in D Major, a piece that remains one of
Respighi’s most significant early compositions as well as
an important twentieth-century Italian contribution to
the string quartet genre.
Like the quartets of Ravel and Debussy, Respighi’s D
Major Quartet takes a traditional four-movement form.
The allegro moderato first movement begins with a
sumptuous instrumental texture and romantic character
made to feel just a little slippery by Respighi’s facile key
modulations. This sumptuousness is contrasted by a
more angular second theme, which goes on to feature
some Debussyesque whole-tone scales. The second
movement is a set of variations on a simple andante
theme of Respighi’s own invention, stated at the outset
and subject to several brief but wide-ranging changes of
character, including a waltz, a scherzo, and a lugubrious
elegy. Respighi titled the third movement Intermezzo; it
opens with a slowly rising five-tone scale that leads immediately into a delicate and often lyrical scherzo (allegretto vivace); a slower central trio section based on the
opening scale supplies the contrast. The allegro vivace
finale opens dramatically, with a leaping melody over
tremolos setting the mood, which is broken up at times
by passages of more lyrical music, leading back to a climax on the opening theme.
Quartet No. 3 in D Major, Op. 18, No. 3
composed in 1798 – duration: 23 minutes
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827)
In 1792, the twenty-two-year-old Ludwig van Beethoven
left his childhood home in Bonn and moved to Vienna,
where he would spend the rest of his life. By this time,
Vienna was already considered the musical capital of
Europe, and it was a tantalizing location for any young
composer hoping to make a name for himself. Beethoven’s initial reason for relocating was his desire to study
composition with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, but those
hopes were dashed when Beethoven learned of Mozart’s
untimely death just a few months before his arrival. Instead, he had the chance to study with Joseph Haydn,
the father of both the symphony and the string quartet,
who was by then the undisputed elder statesman of
Viennese music.
During his first decade in Vienna, Beethoven’s output
consisted primarily of piano music—including ten piano
sonatas, four piano trios, one quartet for piano and
winds, three sonatas for violin and piano, one sonata for
horn and piano, and two piano concertos. This reflects
the realities for a young musician in Vienna in the 1790s:
Beethoven needed to establish himself as a virtuoso pianist first and foremost; the other genres would have to
wait. It is telling that he published his first six string
quartets the same year as his First Symphony; both of
these were genres in which Haydn had exerted a defining
influence, and even the otherwise self-confident Beethoven found it prudent to wait to venture into them. (Ironically, it would be Beethoven’s own towering achievements that intimidated young composers from writing
symphonies or string quartets for the rest of the nineteenth century.) Thus when Beethoven published his
Opus 18 cycle of six string quartets in 1800, it would
have been hard to see them as anything but an homage
to his teacher.
It is generally believed that Beethoven composed the
third quartet in his Opus 18 set before any of the others,
making it his first official attempt in the genre. Set in the
key of D major, the Third Quartet is perhaps the most
subtle quartet in Beethoven’s oeuvre, with the possible
exception of his valedictory Sixteenth Quartet; this gentle sensibility is likely why it was not chosen to open the
cycle. The allegro first movement begins with a graceful
violin solo, which eventually becomes the first theme in
the movement’s sonata form; this is followed by a staccato second theme that seems more agitated by comparison. In the second movement (andante con moto), the
foursquare melody, introduced by the second violin,
builds gradually to a dramatic climax before fading away.
Probably not intended to be a minuet, the short allegro
third movement is more like a light scherzo, and features
some dizzying string runs in the central (trio) section.
Beethoven saved the real energy of this quartet for the
presto finale, which plays out like a vigorous round
dance. Yet just when it seems that the young Beethoven
is at last finding the brash musical style for which his
later “heroic” works would be renowned, he throws the
listener for a curve: the movement ends quietly in an
entirely un-Beethovenlike way.