Download UChicago Presents - University of Chicago Presents

UChicago Presents | Mandel Hall
April 8, 2016, 7:30 PM
Artemis Quartet
Vineta Sareika, violin
Anthea Kreston, violin
Gregor Sigl, viola
Eckart Runge, cello
6:30 PM pre-concert lecture with Abigail Fine
WOLF
Italian Serenade in G Major
JANÁČEK
Quartet No. 1 “Kreutzer Sonata”
Adagio; Con moto
Con moto
Con moto
Con moto
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
String Quartet No. 1 “The Kreutzer Sonata”
LEOŠ JANÁČEK
Born July 3, 1854, Hukvaldy, Moravia
Died August 12, 1928, Moravska Ostrava, Czechoslovakia
Czech composer Leoš Janáček labored for years in obscurity. And at the time of his sixtieth
birthday in 1914 he was known only as a choral conductor and teacher who had achieved modest
success with a provincial production of his opera Jenufa ten years earlier. Then in 1917 came a
transforming event. The aging composer fell in love with Kamila Stösslová, a 25-year-old married woman
and mother of a small child. This one-sided love affair was platonic–Kamila was mystified by all this
passionate attention, though she remained an affectionate and understanding friend. But the effect of this
love on Janáček was staggering: over the final decade of his life he wrote four operas, two string quartets,
the Sinfonietta, the Glagolitic Mass, and numerous other works, all in some measure inspired by his love
for Kamila (he also wrote her over 600 letters).
Not surprisingly, Janáček became consumed in these years with the idea of women: their charm,
their power, and the often cruel situations in which they find themselves trapped by love. The theme of a
woman who makes tragic decisions about love is portrayed dramatically in the opera Katya Kabanova
(1921) and abstractly in his two string quartets. The second of these quartets, subtitled “Intimate Pages,”
is a direct expression of his love for Kamila, while the first, subtitled “The Kreutzer Sonata,” takes its
inspiration from Tolstoy’s novella of the same name. In Tolstoy’s story, a deranged man tells of his
increasing suspicion of his wife, who is a pianist, and the violinist she accompanies in a performance of
Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata. He returns home unexpectedly, finds them together, and stabs his wife to
death.
Working very quickly in the fall of 1923, Janáček composed a string quartet inspired by Tolstoy’s
story (the actual composition took only nine days: October 30-November 7). A few days before the
premiere of the quartet in 1924, Janáček wrote to Kamila, telling her that the subject of his quartet was
“the unhappy, tormented, misused and ill-used woman as described by the Russian writer Tolstoy in his
work, The Kreutzer Sonata.” Janáček’s biographer Jaroslav Vogel reports that the second violinist at the
premiere (who was in fact the composer Joseph Suk) said that “Janáček meant the work to be a kind of
moral protest against men’s despotic attitude to women.”
Listeners should be wary of trying to hear exact representations of these ideas in the quartet, for
this is not music that explicitly tells a story. Some have claimed to hear an elaborate “plot” in this music,
but it is much more useful to approach the First String Quartet as an abstract work of art that creates an
agitated, even grim atmosphere. Listeners should also not expect the normal structure of the classical
string quartet. Janáček’s late music is built on fragmentary themes that develop through repetition, abrupt
changes of tempo and mood, and an exceptionally wide palette of string color. The opening movement
alternates Adagio and Con moto sections, and the other three movements, all marked Con moto, are built
on the same pattern of alternating sections in different speeds, moods, and sounds. There are several
striking touches: the arcing melodic shape heard in the first measures of the quartet will return throughout
(the quartet ends with a variation of this figure), while the opening of the third movement is a subtle
quotation from the Kreutzer Sonata of Beethoven, a composer Janáček disliked. Throughout the span of
the eighteen-minute quartet, the music gathers such intensity that its subdued ending comes as a
surprise.
Janáček’s performance markings in the score are particularly suggestive: by turn he asks the
players to make the music sound “grieving,” “weeping,” “sharp,” “lamenting,” “desperate,” “lugubrious,”
and–at the climax of the final movement–“ferocious.” One does not need to know Janáček’s markings,
however, to feel the intensity of this music.
Italian Serenade
HUGO WOLF
Born March 13, 1860, Windischgraz, Austrian Empire
Died February 22, 1803, Vienna
Hugo Wolf’s reputation rests on his songs, but throughout his brief creative career (he died at 43
in a mental hospital) he dreamed of composing large-scale works. In 1887, at age 27, Wolf composed–in
the space of three days–a movement for string quartet that he called simply Serenade. Three years later,
he added the word “Italian” to that title, apparently as an act of homage to a land of warmth and sunny
spirits, and in 1892 he arranged the serenade for a small orchestra of pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets,
bassoons, horns, and strings (there is also a prominent role for solo viola in both versions). Wolf later
planned to add three further movements to make his Italian Serenade a full-scale orchestral work, but
these came to nothing. Trapped by frequent periods of creative sterility and–increasingly–by periods of
mental instability, he could make no progress on these movements, which survive only as fragmentary
sketches.
The one completed movement of the Serenade, however, has become one of Wolf’s most
frequently performed and recorded works. Some commentators have taken the title quite literally: they
claim to hear in this music an actual serenade sung by a young man to his love on a balcony above.
They cite the opening pizzicatos as the sound of a guitar being tuned and hear the voice of the young
man in the earnest cello and the voice of the young woman in reply.
It is quite possible to enjoy the music without knowing any of this (or searching for it in the music).
The Italian Serenade is in rondo form, set at a very brisk tempo–Wolf marks it Ausserst lebhaft
(“Extremely fast”)–yet the music manages both to be very fast and to project an easy, almost languorous,
atmosphere throughout. Wolf marks individual episodes “tender,” “fiery,” and “passionate” as this music
flows smoothly to its quiet close.
String Quartet in F Major, Opus 59, No. 1
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
Born December 16, 1770, Bonn, Germany
Died March 26, 1827, Vienna, Austria
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