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 NOVEMBER 22 ARIEL STRING QUARTET
2008-09 Ernst Stiefel String Quartet-in-Residence
Saturday, 7:30pm ~ Music Room
ABOUT THE MUSIC
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART
(1756-1791)
Quartet No. 19 in C Major, K. 465 (Dissonance)
In 1781 Haydn composed six string quartets, published the following year as Opus 33, which he cheerfully asserted were in an entirely new style. The works were instantly popular; they have marked, for some critics, the real beginning of the mature Classical era. Few composers had the genius to challenge Haydn’s supremacy in the field of the string quartet. One who did, though, almost certainly learned his craft from the ever growing series of masterpieces that was coming from Haydn’s pen. Mozart met Haydn for the first time in December 1781 (though he had, of course, known and loved Haydn’s music for years). A close friendship formed immediately, one that ended only with Mozart’s premature death ten years later. Each profoundly admired the other. By the end of 1782, Mozart began to demonstrate his veneration for Haydn in his G major quartet, K.384, which represented a marked advance over his earlier chamber works.
The following April, Mozart wrote to the Parisian publisher Joseph Sieber père, to offer him a set of three piano concertos. He remarked in passing, “Since I wrote those piano concertos, I have been composing six quartets...” His remark comes as a surprise, since he had as yet completed only one quartet, and he was not to finish the entire set until January 1785. But his reference to six quartets suggests that he wanted to turn out a full set, just as Haydn had done, in the then standard grouping of six works to make up a full opus.
At some point during the composition of the set, Mozart evidently decided to dedicate them to Haydn, but he wanted to wait until the work was complete before making any of the quartets public. He completed the last two of the six quartets, one in A major (K.464) and one in C major (K.465), just four days apart, on January 10 and 14, 1785. On January 15, he performed the quartets (possibly only part of the set) before Haydn and a few friends. On February 12, Mozart’s father Leopold was visiting from Salzburg. Haydn came to call at Mozart’s lodgings, where he heard once again the last three quartets of the set. On that evening Haydn made his famous and generous tribute (proudly recorded by Leopold in a letter to his wife), “I tell you before God, as I am an honest man, that your son is the greatest composer whom I know personally or by name; he has taste, and over and above that the greatest knowledge of the science of composition.”
The published edition bears Mozart’s homage to Haydn, whom he addresses as “O great man and my dearest friend,” offering him “these six children of mine...the fruit of long and laborious endeavor.” This is a far cry from our normal image of Mozart as the fluent natural genius turning out masterpieces almost as fast as he can write them down. But the manuscripts reveal that he indeed put hard work into these pieces, with many false starts and second thoughts. It took him a long time to absorb the lesson of Haydn’s Opus 33—the relaxed conversational air that conceals a remarkably taut structure, the simultaneous elaboration of four parts, none of which can dominate or drop out for long.
The last of the six “Haydn” quartets has always attracted the most attention because of its daring Adagio introduction, filled with unexpected dissonances and cross relations. These twenty two measures have given the entire work its epithet of “Dissonant.” The Adagio’s harmonic mystifications build suspense so strongly that the sunny arrival of C major has a positively cathartic effect.
The Allegro does not entirely dispel the mysteries, for all its energy and wit. The echoes of that slow introduction linger in the ear to be revived at once when Mozart brings in for a moment unexpected chromaticism or wide ranging modulations, as in the remarkable development and even during his recapitulation. The Andante cantabile throbs with tension squeezed out of the obstinate development of a tiny four note figure echoed persistently between first violin and cello as the outline climbs through nearly two octaves and subsides with ravishing grace in the coda. The Menuetto is a fairly bumptious dance with chromatic touches of melody; these take on a more expressive significance in the yearning Trio. The finale takes its principal character from the two eighth note pickups to the main theme; this gesture generates a whole range of cheerful tunes presented with endless contrapuntal resource and harmonic surprise.
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MENACHEM WIESENBERG
(b. 1950)
Between the Sacred and the Profane for String Quartet, 1991
Israeli composer Menachem Wiesenberg is a prolific and much-honored musical figure whose works range widely from orchestral, chamber and vocal works in the classical field to light music and jazz. He is a composer and arranger, frequently performs as pianist (he was formerly active as pianist of his own jazz trio, in addition to classical chamber music performances), and is active in education.
Mr. Wiesenberg received a master’s degree at The Juilliard School of Music. He is now a Senior Lecturer at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance in Jerusalem and was the founder and Head of the Interdisciplinary Music Department there. He also directs the Interdisciplinary Program at the Jerusalem Music Center founded by Isaac Stern. He has also been a visiting professor at a number of American and British universities and conservatories.
One aspect of his work that has gained considerable renown also relates to the string quartet to be heard here. He has made many arrangements of Israeli and Yiddish folk songs, and this music has fundamentally influenced his composition.
The ten-minute string quartet entitled Between the Sacred and the Profane was composed in 1991 on a commission from the Council for Culture and Art in Israel for the Jerusalem Quartet, which debuted the piece that year. In 1992 it was awarded the prize for outstanding achievement in the concert music field by ACUM, Ltd., the Society of Authors, Composers and Music Publishers in Israel.
The composer has provided the following commentary on the work:
Between the Sacred and the Profane for String Quartet has two movements. The two parts are based on rhythmic and melodic materials which draw upon sources of Jewish liturgical music and songs of the various communities of the people of Israel. The first movement is based on a limited number of biblical cantillations combining two versions: the Moroccan-Casablanca version and the Spanish-Jerusalem one. It is a recitative, prayer-like in character, and embodies both the prayers of the individual and of the congregation. It is freely constructed and its language is chromatic and expressive. The second movement is based, in the main, on three wedding songs of the Jewish community of Tetuan in Spanish Morocco, which is well known for the beauty and wealth of its songs. The songs were picked out from the anthology “the Cycle of Life”, edited by Dr. Shoshana Weich-Shahak. These are Ladino songs influenced by Spanish melodies and rhythms yet they retain the flavor of biblical cantillations.
- Menachem Wiesenberg |
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FRANZ SCHUBERT
(1797-1828)
Quartet No. 13 in A minor D. 804 (Rosamunde)
This quartet, one of the few performed in public in Schubert’s lifetime and the only one published, marked the composer’s return to quartet composition after three years in which he composed nothing for the medium. He was probably moved to take up quartet writing again by his acquaintance with Ignaz Schuppanzigh, the leader of a famous quartet (his ensemble had premiered many of the Beethoven string quartets). Schubert wrote the A-minor quartet in the first months of 1824, and the Schuppanzigh ensemble played it on March 15. The public response must have been favorable, since it was in print as early as the following September.
The quartet seems infused with the spirit of song. The very opening bars sound for all the world like the “vamp” to the song of the first violin, but in this case, instead of remaining discreetly in the background, the accompaniment takes on progressively greater significance.
The Andante is adapted from music that Schubert had already composed for the play Rosamunde, which had failed totally on its opening night, so that he had every reason to suspect that the incidental score would never be heard again. (Indeed, it was not until forty years later that George Grove and Arthur Sullivan, while hunting for missing Schubert works in Vienna, located the lost music to Rosamunde and many other important works, sparking a real Schubert revival, owing to which this Andante melody will no doubt be familiar.)
For the Menuetto, Schubert quoted the opening of another song, Die Götter Griechenlands (The gods of Greece), a setting of Schiller’s lament on the disappearance of that colorful classical world in which an Olympian god might be observed behind any tree or atop any mountain or riding the clouds of a thunderstorm. Schubert had composed the song in 1819. In making use of its material in his string quartet, he takes only the piano accompaniment, not the entire melody, as he did in the “Trout” Quintet. The finale, which makes no use of earlier musical material, is dancelike and cheerful throughout.
- Program notes © Steven Ledbetter (www.stevenledbetter.com)
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ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Ariel Quartet ~ The young Ariel Quartet is rapidly gaining the attention of the music world. Recent awards include First Prize at the International Competition Franz Schubert And The Music Of Modernity in Graz, Austria (2003), special prize for its performance of a Bartók quartet in addition to third prize at the 2007 Banff International String Quartet Competition (reviewing the competition for American Record Guide, Gil French described the Ariel as “a consummate ensemble gifted with utter musicality and remarkable interpretive power” and called their performance of Beethoven’s Quartet Op. 132 “the pinnacle of the competition.”), and Grand Prize at the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition (2006). The Ariel String Quartet has been chosen to be the next resident ensemble in New England Conservatory’s prestigious Professional String Quartet Training Program, and will begin the residency in the fall of 2008.
The members of the Ariel Quartet (Alexandra Kazovsky and Gershon Gerchikov, violin; Sergey Tarashchansky, viola; Amit Even-Tov, cello) are just 22 and 23 years old, but in 2008 they will celebrate their 10th anniversary as a quartet. Formed in Jerusalem in 1998, they were coached by violinist Avi Abramovich at the Jerusalem Conservatory and the Jerusalem Academy of Music, and they were part of the Young Musicians Group of the Jerusalem Music Centre. Since 2004 they have pursued advanced study at the New England Conservatory with Paul Katz, Martha Strongin Katz and Kim Kashkashian. They have also participated in many festivals and workshops including Itzhak Perlman’s chamber music workshop, Steans Institute for Young Artists at Ravinia, Great Lakes Festival, Amadeus Summer Course, and ProQuartet. Itzhak Perlman has described them as “extraordinary,” and Paul Katz, cellist with the Cleveland Quartet, has stated that “I have never heard a quartet so young play this well.”
The Ariel Quartet has performed extensively in Israel, Europe, and North America, including such venues as the Musée du Louvre in Paris, Kaisersaal in Frankfurt (“a tour de force,” Frankfurter Allgemeine), the Washington Performing Arts Society, Neue Galerie in New York City, and Jordan Hall in Boston. Recent performances include the Corcoran Gallery and the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. In addition to performing the traditional quartet repertoire, the Ariel Quartet regularly collaborates with many Israeli and non-Israeli musicians and composers, including clarinettist Moran Katz, pianist Roman Rabinovich, the Jerusalem String Quartet, pianist Alexander Gavrylyuk, composer Matti Kovler, violist Roger Tapping, and the Zukerman Chamber players.
Reflecting its dedication to music education and community service, the Ariel Quartet presents many outreach programs and special performances to a wide range of school and community groups, from kindergartens to homes for the elderly. The quartet received extensive scholarship support from the America Israel Cultural Foundation, Dov and Rachel Gottesman and the Legacy Heritage Fund, thanks to which they are able to graduate their Bachelors degrees this year.
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