Download program note Artemis - University of Chicago Presents

UChicago Presents | Mandel Hall
April 8, 2016, 7:30 PM
Artemis Quartet
Vineta Sareika, violin
Gregor Sigl, violin
TBA, viola
Eckart Runge, cello
6:30 PM pre-concert lecture with Abigail Fine
SCHUBERT
Quartettsatz in C minor, D.703
BARTÓK
String Quartet No. 6, Sz. 114
Mesto; Vivace
Mesto; Marcia
Mesto; Burletta
Mesto
Intermission
BEETHOVEN
String Quartet in F Major, Opus 59, No. 1, Razumovsky
Allegro
Allegretto vivace e sempre scherzando
Adagio molto e mesto
Thème russe: Allegro
PROGRAM NOTES
Quartettsatz in C Minor, D.703
FRANZ SCHUBERT
Born January 31, 1797, Vienna, Austria
Died November 19, 1828, Vienna, Austria
Schubert composed the Quartettsatz–that title, which did not originate with Schubert, means simply
th
“quartet movement”–in December 1820, when he was just a few weeks short of his 24 birthday. He had
apparently planned to write a standard four-movement quartet, but completed only the first movement and a 41measure fragment of what would have been an Andante second movement. No one knows why he set so
promising a work aside and left it unfinished, but–like the “Unfinished” Symphony–what survives is significant
enough by itself to stand as a satisfying whole.
Curiously, the Allegro assai opening movement of this quartet is similar to the first movement of the
“Unfinished” Symphony: both feature the same sort of double-stroked opening idea in the first violins, both are
built on unusually lyric ideas, and both offer unexpected key relations between the major theme-groups. In fact,
the key relationships are one of the most remarkable aspects of the quartet: it begins in C minor with the first
violin’s racing, nervous theme, and this quickly gives way to the lyric second idea in A-flat major, which Schubert
marks dolce. The quiet third theme–a rocking, flowing melody–arrives in G major. As one expects in Schubert’s
mature music (and the 23-year-old who wrote this music was a mature composer), keys change with consummate
ease, though one surprise is that the opening idea does not reappear until the coda, where it returns in the closing
instants to hurl the movement to its fierce conclusion.
Listed as the twelfth of Schubert’s fifteen string quartets, the Quartettsatz is generally acknowledged as
the first of his mature quartets. The first eleven had been written as Hausmusik for a quartet made up of
members of Schubert’s own family: his brothers played the violins, his father the cello, and the composer the
viola. Because he was writing for amateur musicians in those quartets, Schubert had kept the demands on the
players relatively light–his cellist-father in particular was given a fairly easy part in those quartets. But in the
Quartettsatz and the three magnificent final quartets Schubert felt no such restrictions. The Quartettsatz, which
makes enormous technical demands (including virtuoso runs for the first violin that whip upward over a span of
three octaves), was clearly intended for professional performers.
String Quartet No. 6, Sz. 114
BÉLA BARTÓK
Born March 25, 1881, Nagyszentmiklos, Kingdom of Hungary, Austria-Hungary
Died September 26, 1945, New York City
Bartók and violinist Zoltán Székely were longtime friends and colleagues. The two gave numerous duorecitals, and it was for Székely that Bartók wrote both his Second Rhapsody and his Second Violin Concerto. In
1937 Székely became first violinist of the Hungarian String Quartet, and one of his first actions as leader of that
quartet was to commission a new string quartet from Bartók. That project began to occupy Bartók’s thoughts in
the months after the premiere of the Second Violin Concerto in Amsterdam on March 21, 1939.
While the late 1930s saw the creation of some of Bartók’s finest works, these were difficult years for the
composer, who found himself increasingly alienated from Europe and life there. The Nazis’ rise to power troubled
Bartók deeply (after Hitler came to power in 1933 he forbade the performance or broadcast of any of his works in
Germany), and the growing Nazi influence in Hungary made his position there precarious. The summer of 1939,
which he spent in Switzerland, brought a moment of relief amid the gathering gloom–there he wrote the
Divertimento for string orchestra and began the new string quartet, which would be his sixth. He had the first
movements sketched when war broke out in September, and he completed the quartet in November after
returning to Budapest. The death of his mother in December–an event so devastating to Bartók that he could not
attend her funeral–cut his last remaining tie to Europe, and he moved the following year to America, where he
would spend the five final–and very difficult years–of his life.
Given the circumstances of its creation, one would expect this quartet to be somber, and so it is. But it is
also extraordinarily beautiful and moving music. All listeners instinctively sense the depth of feeling in this
quartet, the last work Bartók completed in Europe, but they differ sharply over what the music “means.” Halsey
Stevens hears “despair” in the final movement, and others have suggested that the quartet sprang from “an abyss
of emotional upheaval or collapse.” Others, though, have heard a measure of acceptance, of calm, in the
quartet’s stunning final measures.
The Sixth is the only one of Bartók’s quartets in the traditional four movements, but even here Bartók
could not be “traditional”: he had originally intended to preface each movement with a slow section marked Mesto
(sad). He stayed with this plan through the first three movements, but upon returning to Budapest in the fall of
1939 he was emotionally unable to write the rousing rondo-finale he had originally intended (he actually began to
compose this finale but abandoned the plan after sketching its first ninety measures). Instead, he expanded the
fourth Mesto into a movement of its own, and it is on this bleak note that the quartet concludes.
Solo viola sings the haunting first Mesto, thirteen measures of yearning, lonely music. The Vivace that
follows is in sonata form, based on the vigorous opening figure and a slightly-swung second subject. Full of
sudden tempo shifts and ingenious treatment of thematic motifs, the first movement closes with the first violin’s
high A shimmering quietly all alone. The second movement opens with a Mesto played by cello and colored by
the rustle of the tremolo inner voices. The second movement itself, titled Marcia, is based on rhythms derived
from the verbunkos, the old Hungarian recruiting dance. This raspy march–Bartók marks it risoluto, ben marcato–
lurches along dotted rhythms, unexpected accents, and glissandos; the middle section offers virtuoso passages
for cello and first violin in their highest registers while the viola plays a cimbalon-like accompaniment. After a
somber Mesto interlude featuring the first violin, the third movement (also in three-part form) is marked Burletta,
and a burlesque it certainly is, with the jokes built around snapped pizzicatos and violin glissandos set a grinding
quarter-tone apart. The fourth movement opens again with the Mesto theme introduced by the first violin but
subsequently shared by all. Bartók constructs the ensuing finale entirely from that bleak melody. This is briefly
relieved by reminiscences of themes from the first movement, but the Mesto music reasserts itself before the
unnerving close: below a quiet chord from the violins, the cello slowly sounds the ambiguous concluding pizzicato
chords, themselves a distant memory of the Mesto theme. Bartók bids farewell to Europe–and perhaps to an
entire way of life–as this haunting music fades into silence.
String Quartet in F Major, Opus 59, No. 1
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
Born December 16, 1770, Bonn, Germany
Died March 26, 1827, Vienna, Germany
Count Andreas Kyrillovich Razumovsky, the Russian ambassador to Vienna, was an amateur violinist and
a string quartet enthusiast who had studied with Haydn. When he commissioned a set of three string quartets
from Beethoven in 1805, he could not possibly have known what he would receive in return. Beethoven had at
that time written one set of six quartets (published in 1801 as his Opus 18), cast very much in the high classical
mold as set out by Haydn and Mozart. Doubtless Razumovsky expected something on this order, and he
provided Beethoven with some Russian themes and asked that he include one in each of the three quartets. The
count further assisted the composer by putting at his disposal the count’s own string quartet, led by Beethoven’s
friend Ignaz Schuppanzigh. Beethoven worked two years on these quartets, completing them in 1806 and
publishing them two years later.
The three quartets Beethoven published as his Opus 59, known today as the “Razumovsky Quartets,”
were so completely original that in one stroke they redefined the entire paradigm of the string quartet. These are
massive works–in duration, sonority, and dramatic scope–and it is no surprise that they alienated their early
audiences. Only with time did Beethoven’s achievement in this music become clear. Trying to take the measure
of this new music, some early critics referred to the Razumovsky quartets as “symphony quartets,” but this is
misleading, for the quartets are genuine chamber music. But it is true that what the Eroica did for the symphony,
these quartets–and the two that followed in 1809 and 1810–did for the string quartet: they opened new vistas,
entirely new conceptions of what the string quartet might be and of the range of expression it might make
possible.
Schuppanzigh’s quartet is reported to have burst into laughter at their first reading of the Quartet in F
Major, convinced that Beethoven had intended a joke on them. When Schuppanzigh complained about the
difficulty of this music, Beethoven shot back: “Do you think I worry about your wretched fiddle when the spirit
speaks to me?”
The Quartet in F Major, Opus 59, No. 1 is, at forty minutes, one of the longest of Beethoven’s quartets,
and its opening Allegro is conceived on a gigantic scale. The movement springs to life with its main theme rising
powerfully in the cello under steady accompaniment and then taken up by the first violin. This is an extremely
fertile subject, appearing in many guises and giving the movement much of its rhythmic and melodic shape. It is
entirely characteristic of Beethoven that this theme, which will unleash so much strength and variety across the
span of the movement, should be marked dolce on its first appearance. There is no exposition repeat–the music
seems to repeat, but Beethoven is already pressing forward–and the development centers on an unusual fugal
passage introduced by the second violin. At the conclusion of the movement, the opening subject returns to drive
to a massive climax marked by huge chords and slashing power. While this music is clearly conceived for string
quartet, both in sonority and technique, it is exactly this sort of powerful climax that earned these quartets the
nickname “symphony quartets.”
A curious feature of this quartet is that all four movements are (more or less) in sonata form. The second,
Allegretto vivace e sempre scherzando, has an unusual shape, alternating scherzando sections with trios. The
opening rhythm–announced by the cello and consisting of only one note, a recurring B-flat–underlies the entire
movement; this figure–one repeated note–particularly infuriated many early performers and listeners. The main
theme itself, an oddly asymmetrical figure, appears in the fourth measure and takes up some of this rhythm.
The heartfelt third movement is built on two ideas: a grieving opening theme announced by the first violin
(Beethoven marks it mesto: “sad”) and a steadily-rising melody first played by the cello. The movement comes to
a close as a quasi-cadenza for violin leads without pause to the finale, marked Thème russe. Here is the Count’s
“Russian theme,” a folk melody played by the cello under a sustained violin trill. The blazing final movement is
based primarily on this theme, and its energy level matches the power of the first two movements. Beethoven
offers a final recall of this theme–at a very slow tempo–just before the Presto rush to the close.
- Program notes by Eric Bromberger