Wednesday
April 22, 2009
7:30 pm

Brentano String Quartet

Indianapolis Central Library
Clowes Auditorium
40 East St.Clair St
Indianapolis, In 46204

*Pre-concert lecture, 6:45 pm
Pre-concert lectures are given by
Lisa Brooks, Ph.D., Butler University

Program
Quartet in G Minor, Op. 20, No.3
Franz Joseph Haydn (1732 – 1809)

Quartet No. 4, Op. 37
Arnold Schoenberg (1874 – 1951)

Quartet in A Major, Op. 41, No. 3
Robert Schumann (1810 – 1856)


Program Notes
The Musicians
Since its inception in 1992, the Brentano String Quartet has appeared throughout the world to popular and critical acclaim. "Passionate, uninhibited and spellbinding," raves the London Independent; the New York Times extols its "luxuriously warm sound [and] yearning lyricism"; the Philadelphia Inquirer praises its "seemingly infallible instincts for finding the center of gravity in every phrase and musical gesture"; and the Times (London) opines, "the Brentanos are a magnificent string quartet...This was wonderful, selfless music-making." Within a few years of its formation, the Quartet garnered the first Cleveland Quartet Award and the Naumburg Chamber Music Award; and in 1996 the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center invited them to be the inaugural members of Chamber Music Society Two, a program which has become a coveted distinction for chamber groups and individuals ever since. The Quartet had its first European tour in 1997, and was honored in the U.K. with the Royal Philharmonic Award for Most Outstanding Debut. That debut recital was at London's Wigmore Hall, and the Quartet has continued its warm relationship with Wigmore, appearing there regularly and serving as the hall's Quartet-in-residence in the 2000-01 season.

In recent seasons the Quartet has traveled widely, appearing all over the United States and Canada, in Europe, Japan and Australia. It has performed in the world's most prestigious venues, including Carnegie Hall and Alice Tully Hall in New York; the Library of Congress in Washington; the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam; the Konzerthaus in Vienna; Suntory Hall in Tokyo; and the Sydney Opera House. The Quartet has participated in summer festivals such as Aspen, the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, the Edinburgh Festival, the Kuhmo Festival in Finland, the Taos School of Music and the Caramoor Festival.

In addition to performing the entire two-century range of the standard quartet repertoire, the Brentano Quartet has a strong interest in both very old and very new music. It has performed many musical works pre-dating the string quartet as a medium, among them Madrigals of Gesualdo, Fantasias of Purcell, and secular vocal works of Josquin. Also, the quartet has worked closely with some of the most important composers of our time, among them Elliot Carter, Charles Wuorinen, Chou Wen-chung, Steven Mackey, Bruce Adolphe, and György Kurtág. The Quartet has commissioned works from Wuorinen, Adolphe, Mackey, David Horne and Gabriela Frank. The Quartet celebrated its tenth anniversary in 2002 by commissioning ten composers to write companion pieces for selections from Bach's Art of Fugue, the result of which was an electrifying and wide-ranging single concert program. The Quartet has also worked with the celebrated poet Mark Strand, commissioning poetry from him to accompany works of Haydn and Webern.

The Quartet has been privileged to collaborate with such artists as soprano Jessye Norman, pianist Richard Goode, and pianist Mitsuko Uchida. The Quartet enjoys an especially close relationship with Ms. Uchida, appearing with her on stages in the United States, Europe, and Japan.

The Quartet has recorded the Opus 71 Quartets of Haydn, and has also recorded a Mozart disc for Aeon Records, consisting of the K. 464 Quartet and the K. 593 Quintet, with violist Hsin-Yun Huang. In the area of newer music, the Quartet has released a disc of the music of Steven Mackey on Albany Records, and has also recorded the music of Bruce Adolphe, Chou Wen-chung and Charles Wuorinen.

In 1998, cellist Nina Lee joined the Quartet, succeeding founding member Michael Kannen. The following season the Quartet became the first Resident String Quartet at Princeton University. The Quartet's duties at the University are wide-ranging, including performances at least once a semester, as well as workshops with graduate composers, coaching undergraduates in chamber music, and assisting in other classes at the Music Department.

The Quartet is named for Antonie Brentano, whom many scholars consider to be Beethoven's "Immortal Beloved", the intended recipient of his famous love confession.


Haydn
String Quartet in G minor, Op. 20, No. 3

Joseph Haydn wrote his six opus 20 quartets in 1772, when he was forty years old. At that time he had been the court composer to Count Esterhazy for twelve years, and was to fill that position for a total of thirty. "I was completely secluded from the world," he said of those years, so that "nobody was nearby who could distract me or confuse me about myself; in this way became original." Coming fast on the heels of two earlier sets (opus 9 and opus 17), the opus 20 quartets are arguably Haydn's first quartet masterpieces. They make the fullest use of four completely independent voices (in his earlier quartets Haydn would often fuse the viola and cello parts together to be one line), employ a much expanded range of texture and dynamics, and show for the first time the composer's flexibility in phrase length and structure, with all its attendant capacity for wit and surprise. The set's nickname, the "Sun Quartets", is due merely to the sun that was displayed on the cover of the first edition; the name even seems somewhat misleading, since two of the quartets are in darker, minor keys (it was more the custom to have only one minor-key work in a set at this time), and since the many bright moments in these works are well balanced by passages that are more learned, convoluted, and experimental.
The key of G minor had tragic connotations for Haydn's great contemporary, Mozart, as one can hear clearly in his 40th Symphony or his G minor Viola Quintet. Haydn does not seem to have shared Mozart's feelings about this key. In the opus 20, no. 3 Quartet, as in its later counterpart, the "Rider" Quartet, Haydn couples the key of G minor with a spirited, feisty attitude, sometimes even turbulent and stormy; there is never that sense of fatefulness, of deep sorrow, that the younger composer was to bring. The first movement opens with a figure that is distinguished by a number of jagged leaps up and down, which immediately set a kind of combative tone. By the eleventh bar the composer has already steered the work into a sunnier major key, a sure sign that the movement will be pithy and succinct. The most extraordinary aspect of this movement, however, is its penchant for stopping short in its tracks. Even by Haydn's standards -- he was a master of sudden silences -- this movement, especially in its development, is dotted with these quick stops. Into each silence falls a hushed declaration by the whole quartet in unison, evoking a Greek chorus commenting on the actions of the play's indecisive hero. The dialectic between the forceful main mood and the quiet "commenter" is really what forms the drama of this first movement.

The minuet is perhaps a shade more serious. It is distinguished by phrases of irregular length -- a favorite habit of Haydn's which gives the music an unconstrained, rhetorical air -- and by a rather beautiful trio section in which lyrical counterpoint in the lower three instruments unfolds against a tracery of first-violin eighth-notes. The movement ends in a fading, mournful major key, marked "perdendosi", or "dying away".

The slow, third movement opens like a hymn, with a stately, rising figure in the first violin accompanied by simple chords. The main contrasting idea appears soon after: a tender, twisting line of sixteenth-notes in the cello, the accompaniment now celestial in the high upper strings. These two themes alternate persistently throughout the movement, seeming to suggest an elevated sermon from the individual, the grave response from the multitude.

The finale is a fiery Allegro with strong Gypsy undertones. Despite the minor key, an atmosphere of dark-hued merrymaking prevails. As in the first movement, there are copious sudden stops, sometimes dramatic, sometimes humorous, which keep the listener constantly guessing. A twittering, almost irritable motif, which is first heard right away in the first violin part, becomes a kind of ubiquitous comic leitmotif, refusing to go away; and in fact it has the last word, mumbled in the cello's lowest register as the quartet comes to a close.


Arnold Schoenberg
Quartet No. 4, Op 37
Allegro molto; energico
Commodo
Largo
Allegro

Compared to most important composers, Arnold Schoenberg was virtually self-taught. As a youngster he received a few lessons and he studied counterpoint for a short time as a teenager. The rest of his formal education came from the Viennese composer and conductor Alexander Zemlinsky who befriended young Schoenberg after seeing one of his compositions and agreed to tutor him for a time in counterpoint. In fact his musical grounding came from his own careful study of the masters. When asked with whom he studied music, Schoenberg replied, “with Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, and Wagner”. His early compositions showed the influence of the great Romantics, but shortly after 1900 he began experimenting with atonality and eventually took it as his mission to set music on a different course from the one it had followed for some two hundred years. His atonal compositions were greeted with disdain by critics and concert-goers. Riots actually broke out during performances and on more than one occasion the police had to be called in. The reviewers were devastating: “If this is music, then I pray my Creator not to let me hear it again”. “One deals here with a man either devoid of all sense or who takes his listeners for fools”. The medical world even weighed in when a prominent physician claimed that the composer’s music was capable of arousing dangerous neuroses in the audience.

Schoenberg was too much a musician not to realize that atonality would eventually lead to musical anarchy were it not subjected to some sort of order. Thus, over a period of years, he developed a system that filled his need for freedom while imposing a degree of discipline on his work. He called this system the twelve-tone technique. Simply put, Schoenberg built his works out of twelve arbitrary tones arranged in a definite order, each tone equal in importance to the others, with no tone being repeated until the others had been used. The resulting music was not easy to listen to or understand and for the most part went unappreciated by audiences and critics alike. In time, however, a coterie of disciples including Alban Berg and Anton Webern championed his music and in time most musicians and critics acknowledged his influence on modern musical thinking.

The Opus 37 quartet was written when the composer was residing in Los Angeles, having fled from Nazi Germany in 1933. He had received a commission from a wealthy Californian for a chamber work and produced the piece during a four month period in 1936. It has always been one of his most popular compositions, combining the romantic emotion of his early work with his now supreme mastery of the twelve-tone technique.
The twelve-tone row first appears in the bold opening melody given out by the first violin. A contrasting second theme, quiet, tender, and highly syncopated, follows. The rest of the first movement is mostly involved with an exploration of the initial subject’s power and passion.

The viola states the theme of the second movement, but the cello soon takes the lead. After a brief silence the viola begins the middle section of the movement in duple meter, as contrasted with the three-beat time of the opening. A freely varied return of the original section in triple meter brings the movement to a close.

All four instruments join in the opening to the largo. The music is, at times, dramatic and emotional. At other times, its chantlike, improvisatory style gives it the character of Jewish liturgical music.

The final movement contrasts two styles - one sweet and amiable, the other excited and agitated. Overall the movement has a march-like quality that, eventually quiets and slows to a conclusion of gentle strength.


Robert Schumann
Quartet in A Major, Op. 41, No. 3

Robert Schumann called the string quartet a "by turns beautiful and even abstrusely woven conversation among four people." To him, the genre was venerable and worthy of deep study; he knew and revered the quartets of Haydn and Mozart, and like his contemporary and close friend Mendelssohn, he was demonstrably influenced by Beethoven's quartets when he wrote his own. In fact, when considered vis-à-vis his fanciful, wildly romantic output for solo piano, Schumann's quartets appear as an astonishingly concise, contained and classical group; the "road map" through each movement is crystal-clear, sometimes severely so. On the other hand, the spirit and intent which invest every note of this music bear the unmistakable stamp of Schumann the Romantic, the yearner, the impulsive.

Schumann wrote his three quartets virtually simultaneously, in a couple of summer months in 1842. It was not the easiest time of his life; married only a short time to Clara, who was one of the most celebrated pianists of her generation, he was reconciling himself to being the moon to her sun, and often living at home without her. His letters and journal entries from this year repeatedly refer to gloomy moods, fatigue, and ill health. However, the quartets contain little indication of this state, being filled with decidedly more sunlight than shadow.

The A Major Quartet, which is the third of these, opens with a tender call, a downward-falling two-note motif, which is often affectionately referred to as the "Clara" motif. The entire first movement bases itself on the interval of this motif, which dominates not only the hesitant, short-lived introduction, but also each of the two melodies in the main body of the movement. The second of these, an airborne song first heard in the cello, is accompanied by hovering, offbeat chords in the upper instruments, which seem to want to lift the melody off the ground entirely.

The second movement, a set of variations, continues the idea of "off the beat", a favorite rhythmic game of Schumann's. In this case, the "theme" for the variations appears first as a series of gasps punctuated by brief silences, as if the singer were hyperventilating. Two energetic variations follow close on its heels, the first rendered in shuddering triplets, and the second in declamatory long notes alternating with scampering quick ones. Then follows a sighing Adagio variation, a kind of swaying slow dance. In this variation, we feel that we have finally gotten the original, gasping theme to stand still for a moment, so that we can at last behold the true theme of the movement, candid and vulnerable. The fourth and final variation is stern and embattled, carried onward by churning eighth-notes in the accompaniment. The movement ends with an odd coda, which wanders like a sleepwalker through various keys before settling to a standstill.

The third movement starts out with the promise of repose. In part a hymn, in part a more rhapsodic love-declaration, the music offers a grounded quality that is wholly absent in the first two movements. However, the contrasting episode that follows dissipates that illusion. Punctuated by an obsessive rhythm in the second violin, this section has a nightmarish, angst-ridden quality. Vividly, the main theme from the calmer opening of the movement reappears here, no longer consoling, but rather the agent of intensification. The movement alternates between these two moods, working itself out in a coda where some kind of a resolution is reached among lingering doubts.

The finale is a jovial round dance, a kind of rondo that cheerfully alternates three or four different sections, each section self-contained and rhythmically homogeneous. But the odd thing is that Schumann starts the movement off on the upbeat, and manages to keep the music "off", or off-balance, for virtually the entire movement. So we are rustic, but perhaps a little tipsy as well. Particularly in the extended coda, where the music attempts to stay off the beat but is constantly corrected by downbeat jabs, there is a sense that the music may not quite find its feet in time for the exuberant conclusion.

Wed.
October 29, 2008 7:30
Antares
The Indiana History Center
450 West Ohio Street

Wed.
November 19, 2008 7:30
Quattro Mani
Music for two pianos
The Indiana History Center
450 West Ohio Street

Wed.
March 11, 2009 7:30
Belcea String Quartet
The Indiana History Center
450 West Ohio Street

Wed.
April 22, 2009 7:30
Brentano String Quartet
Indianapolis Central Library
Clowes Auditorium
40 East St. Clair St

Sat.
June 6, 2009 7:30
Guarneri String Quartet
Christel DeHaan
Fine Arts Center
University of Indianapolis
1400 East Hanna Avenue