Program
Schubert
Quartettsatz in C minor,
D. 703
Mozart
SQ in E-flat Major KV 428
Wolf
Italian Seranade
NOVEMBER 1st, 2011
Tuesday at 11:30 a.m.
The Hugo Wolf Quartett
Established in 1993 in Vienna, the Hugo Wolf Quartett has performed in the most prominent concert halls and festivals in the world. The quartet was proclaimed as “new stars in the quartet heaven” by Der Standard in Vienna and their playing was characterized as “urgent and impassioned, but with an absolute commitment to the ideal values of every note” by the Los Angeles Times.
The Hugo Wolf Quartett website
Program Notes
The Hugo Wolf Quartett — November 1, 2011
Quartettsatz in C Minor, D. 703
Franz Schubert (1797 – 1828)
Schubert began composing string quartets at age 14 for his family quartet: his two brothers playing the violins, his father the cello and young Franz the viola. These early works number twelve of the twenty quartets Schubert would compose and reflect the technical limitations of the performers for whom they were written. Schubert’s Quartettsatz in C minor of 1820 marked a new phase in his quartet writing. The quartet was never completed, only the first movement and a fragment of a second movement survive, but the writing clearly points in a new direction that aims toward public performance.
The Quartettsatz in C Minor displays a daring and dramatic reworking of traditional sonata form. Instead of a traditional first theme, the movement opens with an agitated introductory passage that rapidly builds to a fortissimo chord then drops back to pianissimo followed by an unsettled transitional passage leading to the second theme of the movement. This soaring theme in the key of A-flat major is played and repeated an octave higher by the first violin. The remainder of the exposition returns to a development of the agitated music heard in the introduction. These elements are even further expanded in the development section of the movement and the recapitulation begins with the second theme. The opening music of the movement returns only to serve as a concise and dramatic coda.
String Quartet in E-flat Major, KV 428
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 – 1791)
The genesis of this string quartet dates to 1781, when the 25-year old Mozart first met Franz Joseph Haydn, then in his 50th year, and heard Haydn’s newly composed string quartets, Op. 33. According to the musicologist Alfred Einstein, this meeting was “one of the profoundest Mozart experienced in his artistic life.” Mozart was inspired to write six quartets which came to be known as the “Haydn” quartets written in groups of three between December 1782 and July 1783, and between November 1784 and January 1785. The multiple changes and corrections found in the original manuscript, highly unusual for Mozart, testify to the care he took in the compositional process. This is reflected in the dedication to Haydn written on September 1, 1785, “I send my six sons to you most celebrated and dear friend. They are indeed the fruit of a long and arduous labor…”
It is believed that the premiere of the first three quartets including the E-flat Major Quartet took place on January 15, 1785 and the remaining quartets on February 12, 1785 in Mozart’s Vienna apartment. The musicians included Leopold Mozart who played the violin and Wolfgang Mozart who played the viola. It was on this occasion that Haydn made his famous comment to Mozart’s father: “Before God and as an honest man, I tell you that your son is the greatest composer known to me, either in person or by name. He has taste, and, what is more, the most profound knowledge of composition.”
The first movement opens with a stately theme played first in unison and then harmonized to establish the key of E-flat major. The rich texture of the quartet thins out as the violin and then the viola state the second theme. The serene second movement, Andante con moto, features many passages that employ strikingly advanced chromatic harmonies. The vigorous opening of the Menuetto is the first forceful rhythmic gesture in this quartet but the smoother texture of the trio section returns to the lyrical character of the quartet. It is only in the fourth movement, Allegro vivace, that we find the impish good humor and witty contrasts of loud and soft that clearly show Haydn’s influence.
Italian Serenade
Hugo Wolf (1860 – 1903)
Known today primarily for his impressive contribution to the history of German Lieder, the composer’s path to compositional mastery was both painful and convoluted only to end tragically with insanity and death from neurosyphilis at the age of forty three. He was born in the town of Windischgraz, an outpost of German culture within a Slovene region of the Austrian Empire. His father, a leather merchant and amateur musician, passed both his musical talent and moody temperament to his fourth child giving him his first lessons on the violin and piano. Once music had taken hold of him, all attempts at a conventional education failed and his father, who regarded music as an avocation, was forced to relent and allow him to enter the Vienna conservatory. After two years, Wolf’s contentiousness led to his being expelled. On his own, he attempted to survive by giving music lessons for which he lacked the patience, and as a music critic for a small newspaper, a job that also continued to earn him enemies. He did manage to receive some support from other musicians who on the strength of a meager compositional output believed in him. Liszt, for example, praised his early songs and encouraged him to compose a larger work leading to a symphonic poem, Penthesilea. In 1887 with the composition of his Italian Serenade, his most famous composition other than his songs, his fortunes began to change. In a great burst of creativity over the next three years he wrote 174 songs that comprise his most famous collections of lieder. Wolf always wanted to express his love of the bright colors, zestful life-style, and beautiful landscape of Italy. These feelings are conveyed in his forty-eight-song collection, Italienisches Leiderbuch, as in his Italian Serenade. The Seranade was originally a one-movement string quartet; five years later he prepared a string orchestral transcription. In a letter to a friend he indicated plans to compose two more movements for the orchestral version, an Intermezzo and Tarantella, but he was already in a mental hospital and left only preliminary sketches.
The entire mood of the movement is captured in the bright key of G major, the tempo marking Molto vivo and a bouncy sixteen-measure introduction that leads to a jaunty theme spun out by the first violin over a guitar-like accompaniment including off- beat pizzicato accents played by the second violin. This leads to an expressive secondary theme that quickly gives way to the vibrant mood with which the movement opens. The cello interrupts the proceedings with a recitative that only momentarily slows the movement before returning to the opening tempo. Once more the flow of the music is momentarily interrupted by the viola and then the first violin as the opening theme reappears and a coda based on the music heard in the introductory measures of the piece ends with what one author describes as a “shrug of the shoulders.”
Program notes by James L. Franklin, M.D.
The Chicago Chamber Music Society
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Kenilworth, IL 60043
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ext. 0