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Doors Open!
Festival Concert 5
August 19, 2021
Thursday
One-hour concert at Lincoln Theater
4:00 pm – Socially distanced seating with limited capacity; masks required. Tickets must be purchased in advance.
7:30 pm - General admission / open seating; masks requested. Tickets available in advance or at the door.
PROGRAM
Igor Stravinsky Concertino for String Quartet
Franz Joseph Haydn String Quartet in D major, Op. 71, No. 2
George Walker Molto Adagio from String Quartet No. 1
Ludwig van Beethoven String Quartet No. 16 in F major, Op. 135
Brentano String Quartet
(Mark Steinberg and Serena Canin, violins; Misha Amory, viola; Nina Lee, cello)
Artists
Brentano String Quartet
Please note: All ticket sales are nonexchangeable and nonrefundable.
This concert is sponsored by Virginia Swain.
Pre-Concert Lecture by Mark Mandarano:
PROGRAM NOTES
by Mark Mandarano
In the modern imagination, the image of Haydn—elderly, bewigged, steadily employed with few anecdotes about his personal life—is hardly that of a daring innovator, let alone a revolutionary. Yet, behind the deceptively placid exterior, this is the artist who unleashed what might be termed the first pangs of Romantic music during the unpredictable Sturm und Drang (Storm and Stress) period of the 1770s, who elevated the symphony to a higher status, and who was the first to compose what we now know as the string quartet.
In his D Major Quartet, Op. 71, No. 2 (from the early 1790s), all of these sides of Haydn and more are on display. In the first movement, after the briefest of introductions, the main theme gets underway with that most fundamental of musical nuggets—the octave leap. Each member of the quartet joins in on overlapping, harmoniously organized octaves that, taken together, add up to a theme that feels jocular and predictable, right down to the extra little downward octave in the middle of the phrase. This reference point becomes the source of unpredictable humor and even pathos, as the octaves acrobatically pile up into shaky dissonances that must somehow tumble their way back into stability. The second subject gets underway with a theme that’s hardly a theme—an oscillation of steps back and forth between the first violin and the rest of the quartet. A sense of propriety is restored in the second movement where decorous, ornamental triplets flesh out a songlike main idea. These develop into veiled confessions of vulnerability that turn into dark corners and intense whispers, only to be rebuffed and denied a firm resolution. The third movement provides us with the expected dance rhythms—but here Haydn toys with our sense of expectation. Do the descending and ascending arpeggios lead from weak to strong? Or from strong to weak? The final movement takes all of what has gone before to new levels of sublime absurdity, with a lilting 6/8 rhythm, wherein the main melody’s two-note pickup offers us a sense of something to latch onto with each return. These two notes become more and more intertwined, forming an intense counterpoint between earnest voices. Finally, before the long-delayed return of the primary theme, the players get stuck (anticipating the concept of a needle stuck in its groove?), as the rest of the quartet encouragingly awaits the first violin’s stuttering, anticipating the return of the main theme. Finally, after a swift revitalization, the music finds a new gear and what was before lilting and charming becomes a bit of a whirlwind, ratcheted up into a frenzy of cascading amusement.
Beethoven’s Quartet in F Major, Op. 135 is, famously, his last complete work (though he would go on to write one more single movement—to replace the Grosse Fuge as an alternative finale to the B-flat Major Quartet). That this quartet is the last work of Beethoven’s career, coming at the end of a series of quartets that are themselves the conclusion of his famed “late style,” has led to much critical thought being focused on decoding hidden meanings buried within. It is as though Beethoven’s final works were a Book of Seven Seals, of which this, being the last, must be the most profound. There’s certainly an argument to be made that this may be the case; Beethoven did, after all, leave behind cryptic indications over which we still scratch our heads. On the other hand, a case could be made that Beethoven, perhaps knowing that his last works presented such enigmas, left behind as his last, instead of a seventh seal, something of an otter—a piece so amused by its own ebullience that, while it recognizes the profundity of the mountain it prances upon, it is, for the most part, having too good of a time practicing backflips to worry much about the immensity of what surrounds it.
The first movement opens in a kind of theatrical questioning, especially surprising for a work in the traditionally relaxed and pastoral key of F Major. The quick, two-note rising grace note figures have long been characteristic of operatic characters perhaps groping through darkness, turning quickly this way and that, trying to spy out what cannot be seen. Yet, the continuation of this idea brings us right around to a comforting major and a sunnier outlook. Throughout the movement, these two ideas are interlaced in counterpoint, together with a more stable, legato phrase that begins memorably with a yawning interval of a descending seventh. These seemingly odd passing gestures are nevertheless shepherded into a coherent sonata form, where laughing triplets bubble up like champagne, occasionally transformed into venom. Eventually the rising grace notes appear in a forte unison, as though everyone has had enough already and tries to put a mocking stop to unfounded fears.
The scherzo movement is strangely comic, frenetic, and, in places, bizarre. A climatic outburst witnesses the three lower strings repeating a turning figure at top volume while the first violin leaps about like a wild bird crying out with savage joy. The third movement enshrines a moment of profound simplicity. The silences within the middle section explore a place of high uncertainty, as though staring over the brink into the abyss, listening to echoes. (Can this be Beethoven’s inner experience of deafness—asking questions to which he will never actually hear an answer?) Finally there is a long coda of cadences, where the empty areas of the middle section are consolingly filled in with serenely singing lines.
An inscription hangs over the final movement: “Der schwer gefasste Entschluss” (literally: “the heavily reached conclusion,” or, perhaps more idiomatically: “the resolution made with difficulty”). The plain, directness of this statement displays more than a hint of irony—the kind of irony that, behind its humor, disguises yet another layer of philosophical gravity. In this context, the slow introduction poses the insistent question, “Muss es sein?” (“Must it be?” written over the motive on the cello and viola). This query, truly pathetic in desperately rising notes, is reiterated against the wide space opened up by the harmony. To which the Allegro provides the (mocking?) answer, “Es muss sein!” (“It must be!”)—almost childlike in its scampering simplicity—“of course, silly!”—over and over, gleefully. A closing theme, like a whistling tune, appears at first in the cello and then in the violin. Through trills and an expanding sonic compass the music explodes into a blazingly profound beam of light as though the heavens intervene to end the mockery. The question and answer are given in overlapping statements, almost with regret. Nothing could be further from this ponderousness than the impish pizzicato treatment of the whistling tune that begins the final section. In the end, the question and the answer as a unit leave us with a question—to which the music is the answer!
Between the years 1910 and 1913 Stravinsky reached a rarefied position in the world: a composer who was a worldwide celebrity. Applauded for Firebird and reviled for the daring music of The Rite of Spring, he was notorious in the most advantageous sense of the word—scandals sold tickets, creating a worldwide rush to perform his latest works. With the outbreak of the war in 1914, however, opportunities for large-scale compositions became fewer, and Stravinsky was hardly known as a creator of modest, well-behaved chamber music. In fact, Stravinsky was hardly known for his writing for strings. His ballets drew attention for their snarling brasses, chattering woodwinds, and barbarous percussion. During wartime, Stravinsky turned the attention away from rhythmic and timbral innovations back toward the fundamental problems of composition. As he was to say years later, “All music being nothing but a succession of impulses and repose, it is easy to see that the drawing together and separation of poles of attraction in a way determine the respiration of music.”
Stravinsky’s Concertino opens with an ascending gesture, played simultaneously in the cello, viola, and first violin, the notes of which are everyday scales, in the proper order, going upward stepwise to complete an octave (plus one more note). Here are presented the very foundations of tonality. However, these scales are from two different worlds: C major (cello and 1st violin) and C-sharp Dorian (viola). Played simultaneously, the notes clash by half-step (minor ninths and major sevenths) in every case except for the two pitches they have in common (E and B, which are crystal clear octaves and unisions). For a composer who thinks of music in terms of “poles”, what more efficient way to announce that here is music steeped in the heritage of the past, but which will turn it to new, exciting, and possibly disturbing ends?
Immediately after the scales, jagged, accented figures interrupt one another and clashing, folk-dance-like phrases lurch forward in fragments. The material from this opening section reappears closer to the end to frame a middle wherein the first violin performs as a concerto-like soloist, playing complex double-stop passages, with a degree of expressive lyricism. When the opening material returns, it now becomes a mad dance, breaking out into keys such as A major, as though the buried tonal roots finally reach the surface. The frenzy breaks off however, to devolve into the uneasy clashes that have been within the genetic makeup of the work all along.
George Walker is one of America’s great composers. Born in 1922 in Washington, DC, his list of accomplishments and honors puts him among the most lauded musicians of the 20th Century: he attended Oberlin and Curtis, studied piano with Rudolf Serkin, and performed as a concerto soloist with Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra, as well as with most of the other major orchestras. As a composer he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, had works commissioned by virtually all the major orchestras of the US and by major performers, and his works have been conducted by a roster of conductors that reads like a who’s who of music in America: Comissiona, Eschenbach, Järvi, Maazel, Mehta, Muti, Ozawa, Rostropovitch, Skrowaczewski, Slatkin, Tortelier, and Zinman. Which leads one to ask oneself—why is his music not better known? Walker, who was also an esteemed educator, analyzed this question in his speeches and writings. The music of Black people in America became narrowly associated with a few genres—popular music, jazz, spirituals, and some folk music. And the music of Black composers in the classical tradition was neglected if it did not overtly reference these traditions—and even if it did, those performances were relegated to special programs, often in the month of February. In a 1991 opinion piece in the New York Times, Walker writes:
The earliest generation of black classical composers has been succeeded by a far larger group of talented craftsmen. Their styles are diverse, reflecting differences in temperament, compositional technique and instrumental signatures. Their common denominator is not a use of black idioms but a fascination with sound and color, with intensities and the fabric of construction. Pretentiousness and bombast are conspicuously absent. And these composers are left to languish.
The points Walker made in 1991 are ones we are just beginning to seriously address today.
Walker’s music speaks very much in an individual voice, wherein one can hear hints of an “American” idiom a la Copland, in its open quality and some of its brashness. And one can perhaps hear, deep within the background, hints of the Black idioms to which he refers . But, overall, there is a toughness, a strength, and an uncompromising vitality. The second slow movement of his first string quartet yielded the Lyric for Strings when expanded to string orchestra—similar to the way the Adagio for Strings by Barber was extracted from his first quartet. Walker wrote of the piece:
After a brief introduction, the principal theme that permeates the entire work is introduced by the first violin. A static interlude is followed by successive imitations of the theme that leads to an intense climax. The final section of the work presents a somewhat more animated statement of the same thematic material. The coda recalls the quiet interlude that appeared earlier. The Lyric for Strings is dedicated to the memory of my grandmother.
Walker’s grandmother, it should be noted, escaped from slavery and her first husband was lost to her when he was sold at auction. Against this background, the soulfulness with this music speaks of generations of history.
—By Mark Mandarano