Australian String Quartet - Beethoven Dessner

BEETHOVEN DESSNER

CANBERRA 9 FEB 2020

A U S T R A L I A N S T R I N G Q U A R T E T – N AT I O N A L P R O G R A M 2 0 2 0

WELCOME NOTE Welcome to our first ASQ National Tour Concert of 2020.

We’re thrilled that you’ve joined us this afternoon in beautiful Gandel Hall at the National Gallery of Australia.

This concert marks the beginning of our year long celebration of the 250th birthday of Beethoven. His string quartets stand among the most life-affirming bodies of work ever created. Today, you will hear two of the early ones, already masterpieces in their own right, Beethoven clearly flexing his muscles and heralding a new direction for Western classical music. Bringing us back into the present, we showcase the electrifying music of a relative newcomer to the string quartet world - Bryce Dessner - a young, contemporary artist who forged his career as a guitarist and songwriter in the celebrated American band, The National.

Across Australia, we have an exciting year ahead of us. Our Quartet & Country project at the Perth Festival juxtaposes Beethoven with the songlines of indigenous Australia. A world premiere, cross-artform collaboration with the Sydney Dance Company sees a brand new work choreographed by Rafael Bonachela, set to new music by Bryce Dessner. Project Ludwig is an interactive exploration of Beethoven’s Opus 18 string quartets which allows our audience to determine the outcome of the concert!

And as always, we invite you to join us at one of our intimate musical escapes in Dunkeld (VIC), Margaret River (WA) and for the first time, Dungog (NSW) in the beautiful Hunter region.

Back in Gandel Hall, we hope to see you again on 19 July as we premiere a brand new work by Australian composer, Ross Edwards, alongside Mozart’s Dissonance Quartet and Janacek’s Intimate Letters.

Dale, Francesca, Stephen and Sharon.

The ASQ acknowledges the traditional owners of the lands across Australia and in particular the traditional custodians of the land we are meeting on today. We pay our respects to the Elders, past, present and emerging, for they hold the memories, the traditions, the culture and hopes of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples across the nation. We extend our respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people present this afternoon.

PROGRAM BEETHOVEN String Quartet in A major op 18 no 5

BRYCE DESSNER Aheym INTERVAL

BEETHOVEN String Quartet in F major op 18 no 1

BEETHOVEN DESSNER Sunday 9 February, 2pm Gandel Hall, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Join us for our upcoming concerts

A S Q P L AY S I N T I M AT E L E T T E R S Sunday 19 July, 2pm

A S Q P L AY S L AT E B E E T H O V E N Sunday 11 October, 2pm asq.com.au

AUSTRALIAN STRING QUARTET For over 30 years, the Australian String Quartet (ASQ) has created unforgettable string quartet performances for national and international audiences. Dedicated to musical excellence with a distinctly Australian flavour, the ASQ’s purpose is to create chemistry and amplify intimacy through experiences that connect people with string quartet music.

From our home base at the University of Adelaide, Elder Conservatorium of Music, we reach out across Australia and the world to engage people with an outstanding program of performances, workshops, commissions and education projects.

Our distinct sound is enhanced by a matched set of 18th century Guadagnini instruments, handcrafted by Giovanni Battista Guadagnini between c.1743 and 1784 in Turin and Piacenza, Italy. These precious instruments are on loan to the ASQ for their exclusive use through the generosity of UKARIA.

Dale Barltrop plays a 1784 Guadagnini Violin, Turin Francesca Hiew Plays a 1748-49 Guadagnini Violin, Piacenza Stephen King plays a 1783 Guadagnini Viola, Turin Sharon Grigoryan plays a c.1743 Guadagnini Violincello, Piacenza ‘Ngeringa’

Masterworks by Beethoven, Dutilleux, Dvořák, Janáček and Mozart, alongside world premieres of Australian composers Anne Cawrse and Ross Edwards, make up our three major National Tours in 2020. We are also excited to be touring with acclaimed pianist Konstantin Shamray. Looking beyond, our ground-breaking Close Quarters series continues with more compelling partnerships, and our regional festivals travel again to Dunkeld and Margaret River, and for the very first time, to the shire of Dungog in New South Wales. Also, we are thrilled to join creative forces with Sydney Dance Company for a brand new work, and in the 250th year since the great composer’s birth, Beethoven is celebrated with a series of special events across the country.

At home in South Australia, we continue our work as Quartet-in-Residence at the University of Adelaide’s Elder Conservatorium of Music with education projects and performances as part of the Elder Hall Lunchtime Concert series, and Mornings at UKARIA will continue to bring the sounds of the string quartet to the beautiful landscape of the Adelaide Hills.

Guadagnini Quartet Project In 2010, UKARIA embarked on one of the most significant philanthropic projects in Australia’s musical history - the acquisition of a unique quartet of rare stringed instruments (c.1743-1784) crafted by Giovanni Battista Guadagnini.

Guadagnini is one of history’s foremost luthiers, in company with Stradivarius and Guarneri del Gesu. This matched set of instruments, held in trust by UKARIA and made available as a set in perpetuity to Australia’s most outstanding string quartet, is unprecedented anywhere in the world. The current recipients are the Australian String Quartet.

The instruments included in the collection are: 1784 Guadagnini Violin (Turin) 1748-49 Guadagnini Violin (Piacenza) 1783 Guadagnini Viola (Turin) c.1743 Guadagnini Cello ‘Ngeringa’ (Piacenza) Through the generosity of Ulrike Klein AO, The Klein Family Foundation, Maria Myers AC, Allan Myers AC, The James and

Diana Ramsay Foundation, Didy McLaurin, Joan Lyons, David McKee AO and Pam McKee, and many other donors, UKARIA completed the project on 18 December 2017, raising the funds to acquire all four instruments at a total cost of $6,183,188.

This project has brought together a group of visionary patrons who understand the significant cultural value in a collection of this calibre.

Philanthropic Champions Ulrike Klein AO Klein Family Foundation Allan J Myers AC Maria J Myers AC James and Diana Ramsay Foundation Didy McLaurin Joan Lyons Mrs F.T. MacLachlan OAM David McKee AO and Pam McKee Pauline Menz Dr Rabin Bhandari Lang Foundation Hartley Higgins The Board of UKARIA also recognises and thanks the following donors who have each made a significant contribution to this project:

Major Gifts Don and Veronica Aldridge Elizabeth Clayton John Clayton Colin and Robyn Cowan Katherine Fennell Frances Gerard Julian and Stephanie Grose Andrew and Hiroko Gwinnett Richard Harvey AM Lyndsey and Peter Hawkins Janet and Michael Hayes Jari and Bobbie Hryckow Thora Klein Tupra Pastoral Company Macquarie Foundation Mr H.G. MacLachlan Mrs S.T. McGregor Peter and Pamela McKee Janet McLachlan Robert O’Callaghan and Pam O’Donnell John Phillips Margaret Piper Jill Russell Nigel Steele Scott Sidney Myer Fund Mary Louise Simpson Gary and Janet Tilsley Ian and Pamela Wall Janet Worth To every patron who contributed to this project we thank you for your support.

To learn more visit UKARIA.com

PROGR AM NOTES

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770-1827) String Quartet in A major op 18 no 5 (1798 – 1800) Allegro Menuetto and trio Andante cantabile Allegro Being a group of six, opus 18 follows the practice of both Haydn (opp 20 and 33) and Mozart (in the ‘Haydn’ Quartets), and the influence of specific works by both composers can be seen. Beethoven made no secret of his labours with the form, and many commentators have found various lapses of technique, taste or personality in this set, with the result that they are often written off as curiosities. They may lack the effortless mastery of the late works, but in addition to containing much wonderful music, they prefigure later developments in Beethoven’s art. In a letter of 10 December 1800, the Countess Josephine von Deym (who with her sister Therese von Brunsvik had been a student of Beethoven’s) describes a salon concert at which ‘Beethoven, that real angel, let us hear his new quartets, which have not been engraved yet and are the greatest of their kind’. It was clear that these works pointed the way to something extraordinary.

One-time student of Beethoven, Karl Czerny remembers Beethoven opening the score of Mozart’s A major Quartet K 464 and saying: ‘That is a work! In it, Mozart said to the world: “See what I could create if the time had come for you.”’ We also know that Beethoven had hand-copied the score of Mozart’s finale, so it was clearly both a useful formal model and a source of some inspiration for him. The formal debt or homage is immediately apparent. In both works the opening allegro is characterised, somewhat unusually, by a triple metre; the second movement, again rather

unconventionally, is the dance movement – in both cases a Menuetto; the third movement in each is a substantial, moderately slow andante with a theme and variations; and the allegro finale of both works manages to combine great rhythmic energy with deftly handled counterpoint. Robert Simpson has warned against making too much of the comparison, however, noting that the first movement could ‘only have been written by the young Beethoven’. The grace of K 464, he goes on, ‘is intellectually self-conscious compared with Beethoven’s (in this case) much more naïve pleasures’.

Maybe not so naïve, however. The opening is disarmingly, if charmingly, light (and often very funny), but the overall arc of this work traces a path from music which is ‘conventional’ almost to the point of being free of strongly profiled material, as in the opening movements, through passages of increasing complexity and dramatic weight.

Joseph Kerman felt that this ‘must be counted the least personal of Beethoven’s quartets’, but misses the point that much of Beethoven’s work is about creating music out of nothing, and that in the late quartets what is important is nothing as simple as personal expression.

Gordon Kerry © 2001

PROGR AM NOTES

BRYCE DESSNER (19 7 6 - )

Aheym (2009)

Aheym means ‘homeward’ in Yiddish, and this piece is written as musical evocation of the idea of flight and passage. As little boys, my brother and I used to spend hours with my grandmother, asking her about the details of how she came to America. (My father’s family were Jewish immigrants from Poland and Russia). She could only give us a smattering of details, but they all found their way into our collective imagination, eventually becoming a part of our own cultural identity and connection to the past. In her poem “Di rayze aheym,” the American-Yiddish poet Irena Klepfisz, a professor at Barnard in New York and one of the few child survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto, writes: “Among strangers is her home. Here right here she must live. Her memories will become monuments.

Aheym is dedicated to my grandmother, Sarah Dessner. © Bryce Dessner

We look forward to premiering Bryce Dessner’s new work Impermanence as part of Sydney Dance Company’s seasons of Bonachela Forsythe in Sydney and Melbourne later in 2020.

Visit asq.com.au for more information.

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PROGR AM NOTES

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770-1827) String Quartet in F major op 18 no 1 (1798 – 1800) Allegro con brio Adagio affetuoso ed appassionato Scherzo (allegro molto) and trio Allegro Dear Amenda.

Accept this quartet as a small token of our friendship. Every time you play it remember the days we spent together and at the same time how truly devoted to you I was, and always will be Your true affectionate friend Ludwig van Beethoven.

Vienna 1799, 25 June

So Beethoven inscribed a manuscript copy of this work (originally the second of the series). He so trusted Amenda that the latter was one of the first people in whom the composer confided the fact of his deafness just over a year later. Characteristically though, while expressing real despair and fear for his future, Beethoven maintained his professional focus. In the same letter of July 1801 he asks ‘do not hand on your quartet to anyone because I have altered it a great deal, since I have only now learned to write quartets as you will see…’

This seems to have been the only quartet in the series subjected to revision. By all accounts Beethoven refined the texture of this work considerably, and decreased the number of times its first movement theme was repeated. That movement, however, remains highly concentrated with its tautly coiled first theme, tensile triple rhythm and extensive repertoire of striking gestures.

According to Amenda, the adagio – and we should remember that the adagio, as

against the slightly faster andante favored

by Mozart and Haydn, became a critical part of Beethoven’s output – was Beethoven’s response to the burial scene in Romeo and Juliet. The words ‘the last sigh’ appear, in French, over a specific musical gesture on one of Beethoven’s sketches. The latter movements are considerably lighter in tone: the scherzo is genuinely witty; the finale is full of sudden harmonic turns and a whirling motive which suggests that the coiled tension of the opening has been released.

Gordon Kerry © 2019

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DONORS The Australian String Quartet would like to acknowledge and sincerely thank the following donors for their ongoing support along with those donors whose very important contributions either remain anonymous or are less than $1000.

The following donations reflect cumulative donations made from 2015 onwards and the Australian String Quartet is extremely grateful for all the support received from its donors.

The ASQ is registered as a tax deductible recipient.

Donations can be made by phoning the ASQ on 1800 040 444 or online at asq.com.au/support

Principals ($50,001+) Mr Philip Bacon Nicholas Callinan AO & Libby Callinan Clitheroe Foundation Kay Freedman & the late Ian Wallace Richard Harvey AM & the late Tess Harvey Peter & Lyndsey Hawkins Andrew Johnston The Stuart Leslie Foundation Joan Lyons Mrs Diana McLaurin Allan J Myers AC & Maria J Myers AC Andrew Sisson AO Thyne Reid Foundation Wright Burt Foundation

Susan M Renouf Nigel Steele Scott Carl Wood Anonymous (2)

Champions ($25,001 - $50,000) Don & Veronica Aldridge Janet & Michael Hayes Lang Foundation Macquarie Group Foundation Peter & Pamela McKee David McKee AO & Pam McKee Pauline Menz Lady Potter AC-CMRI Brenda Shanahan Charitable Foundation Anonymous (2)

Classic Partners ($5,001 - $10,000) John & Mary Barlow Berg Family Foundation Brand Family Foundation Caroline & Robert Clemente Perri Cutten & Jo Daniell Mr James Darling AM & Ms Lesley Forwood John Funder & Val Diamond Susan & Daniel Hains Kimberley & Angus Holden Keith Holt & Anne Fuller Mr Robert Kenrick Roderick & Elizabeth King Sonia Laidlaw Annette Maluish Marshall-Hall Trust Mrs Skye McGregor Kerrell & David Morris Paul O'Donnell Patricia H Reid Jill Russell Robert Salzer Foundation Gary & Janet Tilsley Annie & Philip Young Fay Zaikos Anonymous (2)

Guardians ($10,001 - $25,000) John & Libby Clayton TC & MR Cooney Maurice & Tess Crotti Margaret Flatman Helen & Michael Gannon Nonie Hall Mr Hartley Higgins Neil & June Jens Klein Family Foundation Glenda & Greg Lewin AM Michael Lishman & Deidre Willmott Janet McLachlan Robert Menz MG Prichard & BE Panizza Tony & Margaret Pagone James & Diana Ramsay Foundation

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Australian String Quartet Richard Divall Australian Music Fund Don & Veronica Aldridge Roslyn Allen Bernard & Jackie Barnwell Brand Family Foundation Nicholas Callinan AO & Libby Callinan John & Christine Chamberlain John & Libby Clayton Caroline & Robert Clemente Perri Cutten & Jo Daniell Fleur Gibbs Roz Greenwood & Marg Phillips Alan Gunther Tim & Irena Harrington Dr Penny Herbert in memory of Dunstan Herbert Keith Holt & Anne Fuller Kevin & Barbara Kane Rod & Elizabeth King Angus Leitch Glenda & Greg Lewin AM Pauline Menz Jo & Jock Muir Allan J Myers AC & Maria J Myers AC Tony & Margaret Pagone MG Prichard & BE Panizza Karin Penttila Lady Potter AC Susan M Renouf Drs Paul Schneider & Margarita Silva Diana Sher OAM & Jeffrey Sher QC Rob & Jane Southey Mary & Ian Steele Gary & Janet Tilsley Annie & Philip Young Anonymous (3)

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STAFF AND BOARD Board Nicholas Callinan AO – Chair Bruce Cooper – Deputy Chair Angelina Zucco – Chief Executive Alexandra Burt John Evans Janet Hayes Janet McLachlan Marisa Mandile Paul Murnane Susan Renouf Suzanne Stark Artistic Directors Dale Barltrop – Artistic Director | Violin 1 Sharon Grigoryan – Artistic Director | Cello Francesca Hiew – Artistic Director | Violin 2 Stephen King – Artistic Director | Viola

Australian String Quartet

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