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JULY 5
Sunday, 4:30pm - Venetian Theater
Tickets: $15.00, $20.00, $30.00, $45.00 order online
Simin Ganatra, Sibbi Bernhardsson, violins; Masumi Per Rostad, viola; Brandon Vamos, cello; with Guest Artist Joyce Yang, piano
The Pacifica Quartet - 2009 Grammy Award winner, Musical America's 2009 ensemble of the year, Caramoor's 2001-02 Ernst Stiefel String Quartet-in-Residence - is simply the hottest string quartet in the country.
Introduce your family to Caramoor and enjoy the sounds of the concert from the picnic lawns.
Concert Al Fresco tickets: $10.00 order online
ABOUT THE MUSIC
Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)
String Quartet No. 1 in E-flat Major, Op. 12
Raised in a wealthy and cultured family in Berlin, Felix Mendelssohn displayed amazing musical ability as a very young child and by age seventeen had composed his Octet for strings and Overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream, showing a creative gift surpassing even that of Mozart at a comparable age. He was enormously successful in his lifetime as a conductor, composer, educator, and performer and was widely considered the greatest musician of his generation.
Despite the respect Mendelssohn received from his Romantic contemporaries, he was never comfortable with what he considered their stylistic excesses. He described one composer's music as "a frightful muddle, an incongruous mess....One ought to wash one's hands after handling his scores." Romantic elements are present in Mendelssohn's music, but his style was more strongly influenced by such older Classical ideas as balance, clarity, emotional restraint, and elegant craftsmanship.
Shortly after his twentieth birthday in the spring of 1829, Mendelssohn embarked on a three-year post-university "grand tour" of Europe, sailing to England. The Opus 12 quartet was completed in London in September 1829 and carries the lowest opus number of his string quartets even though it was composed two years after the quartet published as Opus 13.
Mendelssohn's Opus 12 is highly unified, with musical ideas from the first movement reappearing in both the third and fourth movements. In the second movement, Mendelssohn replaces the more traditional scherzo with a delicate, fairy-like canzonetta, a light vocal form. A musical motif in the character of the first movement is heard early in the third movement Andante espressivo and reappears even more prominently at the third movement's ending. The fourth movement, a high-spirited, dance-like flow of notes, proceeds without pause. The mood changes, however, and Mendelssohn re-introduces quieter musical material from the first movement to produce an unexpectedly subdued ending.
--Program note by Robert Strong, partially adapted from Guide to Chamber Music by Melvin Berger.
(© 1985) Used with permission of the publisher, Dover Publications
György Ligeti (1923-2006)
String Quartet No. 1 (Métamorphoses nocturnes)
The first word of the subtitle refers to the form: It is a kind of variation form, only there is no specific "theme" which is then varied. It is, rather, that one and the same musical concept appears in constantly new forms - that is why "métamorphoses" is more appropriate than "variations." The quartet can be considered as having just one movement or also as a sequence of many short movements that melt into one another without pause or which abruptly cut one another off. The basic concept which is always present in the intervals, but which is in a state of constant transformation, consists of two major seconds that succeed each other transposed by a semitone. In this First String Quartet there are certainly some characteristics of my later music, but the writing is totally different, "old-fashioned;" there are still distinct melodic, rhythmic and harmonic patterns and bar structure. It is not tonal music, but it is not radically atonal, either. The piece still belongs firmly to the Bartok tradition (remember my situation as a composer in Hungary at the beginning of the fifties), yet despite the Bartok-like tone (especially in the rhythm) and despite some touches of Stravinsky and Alban Berg, I trust that the First String Quartet is still personal work.
-György Ligeti
reprinted with permission of artists' management
Antonín Dvorák (1841-1904)
Piano Quintet in A Major, Op. 81
Dvorák composed his first piano quintet (A Major, Op. 5) in 1872, but, unhappy with the results, destroyed the score shortly after its premiere later that year. Some fifteen years went by and Dvorák reconsidered his rash act. He retrieved a friend's copy of the music and made extensive revisions. Still not satisfied, he decided not to submit it for publication after all. Instead, he wrote the completely new Piano Quintet in A Major, Op. 81, which is now one of the three acknowledged masterpieces in the form; the others are by Schumann and Brahms.
By 1887 Dvorák had achieved acclaim and acceptance for his nationalistic music, having passed through a few years of crisis in the early 1880's, a time when he was torn between his desire to continue incorporating national musical elements into his compositions and the urging of Brahms and other friends to live in Vienna and devote himself to the creation of operas in German. As part of his renewed devotion to the Bohemian fold idiom, Dvorák composed the piano quintet, the E-flat piano quartet, and the "Dumky" Trio, works that have come to epitomize the composer’s nationalistic style.
Fresh and lovely, gleaming with bright melodies, glowing harmonies, and piquant rhythms, the quintet opens with a wonderfully lyrical theme in the cello. Dvorák immediately puts the melody through a succession of transformations before the viola introduces the second subject, less cantabile than the first, and with a slight tinge of sadness. Here, too, Dvorák varies the melody at once, changing its serious character to one of increasing jubilation. After a full development of the two subjects, Dvorák has a free recapitulation that is much shorter that the exposition.
The Dumka is modeled on an old folk-ballad form, with repetitions of a sober, pensive melody separated by fast, happy interludes. It can be diagrammed as A-B-A-C-A-B-A. The A section consists of the refrain (piano) and variations on the melancholy principal theme (viola); B is a contrasting melody, fast and sunny, shared by both violins and the piano. After the return of A, the quick and vigorous C section, which is derived from the opening refrain, is announced by the viola. The overall elegiac tone, alternating with abrupt changes in mood and tempo, readily conveys the spirit of the Slavonic folk ballads that were Dvorák's source of inspiration.
Although Dvorák parenthetically adds Furiant after the title, Scherzo, this movement lacks some of the customary characteristics of the folk-dance form. It sounds rather liked a fast waltz, with a slow middle section that is really a nostalgic reminder of the Scherzo section and a shortened repeat of the first part in conclusion.
The Finale is a high-spirited, lightsome cap to the entire quintet. Combining the vigor of a peasant dance with the playful badinage of a humorous folk song, the entire movement, including the fugal section in the development and chorale in the coda, coruscated brilliantly throughout.
Dvorák composed the quintet from August 18 to October 8, 1887, and it was first heard in Prague on January 6, 1888.
-Notes from: Guide to Chamber Music by Melvin Berger, (© 1985)
Used with permission of the publisher, Dover Publications
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