Australian Haydn Ensemble Artists:
Skye McIntosh Artistic Director & Lead Violin
Ella Bennetts Violin
Rafael Font Viola
Daniel Yeadon Cello
Program
HAYDN
String Quartet in C major, Op. 33 No. 3 The Bird
PURCELL
Fantasia in 4 parts, Z. 839
MOZART
Divertimento in F Major K. 138
Interval(20minutes)
BOCCHERINI
String Quartet in F Minor G. 200
HAYDN
String Quartet in B - flat major, Op. 76 No. 4 Sunrise
mins
mins
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Franz Joseph Haydn (1732–1809)
String Quartet in C major Op. 33 No. 3 “The Bird”
Allegro moderato
Scherzo: Allegretto
Adagio ma non troppo
Finale: Rondo. Presto
Haydn called his Op. 33 quartets “new and special,” and for good reason. Composed in 1781, they were lighter, wittier, and more conversational than his earlier quartets and in many ways, they redefined the genre.
Op. 33 No. 3 quickly picked up the nickname The Bird thanks to the trilling, chirping first violin motifs that open the work, cheekily imitating birdsong. But the humor is matched by craft: Haydn constantly plays with expectations, flipping rhythms, and playing cat-and-mouse with harmonic shifts. The Scherzo brims with rustic swagger, the slow movement sings with elegance, and the Finale a whirlwind Rondo flashes past with irrepressible energy. It’s Haydn in his most playful mood, and still entirely in control.
Henry Purcell (1659–1695)
Fantasia in 4 parts No. 8 in D minor, Z.739
"The poet wishes well to the divine genius of Purcell and praises him that, whereas other musicians have given utterance to the moods of man’s mind, he has, beyond that, uttered in notes the very make and species of man as created both in him and in all men generally." Gerard Manley Hopkins' dedication to his poem Henry Purcell.
Purcell wrote his fifteen or so Fantasias & In Nomines when a young man of 21. Three years earlier, around his 18th birthday, he had replaced Matthew Locke as composer for the 24-strong violin band at court and two years later had replaced John Blow as organist at Westminster Abbey. He probably wrote the Fantasias as contrapuntal exercises, with no expectation of their being published and little of their being performed.
Indeed, publication had to wait almost 250 years for Peter Warlock to edit their manuscript in the British Library. They can be regarded as a tribute to a dying style that had flourished with Simpson and Locke. Grove's Dictionary: "After 1660 the English repertory of viol fantasias quickly fell into neglect ‘by reason of the scarcity of Auditors that understand it’ ". Purcell is unlikely to have been able to assemble a suitable consort of viols to play his Fantasias.
The technical expertise of their composition however is remarkable. Grove again: "In form, instrumentation and style these are closely patterned on fantasias of Locke; but Purcell's mastery of the techniques of contrapuntal elaboration (augmentation, inversion, double and
triple ‘fuge’) and the highly expressive use of chromaticism and dissonance in his slow sections give these last examples of the genre a unique brilliance and intensity."
Notes by Chris Darwin
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791)
Divertimento in F major, K. 138
Allegro
Andante
Presto
Mozart composed his three string divertimenti K. 136–138 in early 1772, just 16 years old and already astonishingly fluent. These pieces, likely written for string orchestra and are often referred to as the Salzburg Symphonies - however - they work equally well as string quartets, showcasing Mozart’s gift for melody and instinct for charm.
The F Major K. 138 Divertimento opens with an Allegro that sparkles with the enthusiasm of youth - full of sunny themes and rhythmic bounce. The Andante shifts gears entirely: graceful, lyrical, and slightly melancholy, it unfolds like an operatic aria, hinting at the emotional sophistication Mozart would later develop in full. The final Presto returns to high spirits, driving forward with irrepressible energy and elegance.
While the title “Divertimento” might suggest music designed simply to entertain, K. 138 reveals a young composer already thinking deeply about drama, contrast, and character. It’s a miniature masterclass in clarity and invention proof that even Mozart’s “light” music holds real substance.
Luigi Boccherini (1743–1805)
String Quartet in F minor, G. 200
Luigi Boccherini was a celebrated Italian cellist who spent most of his professional life in Spain. Born in Lucca, he toured as a young musician with his father, a double bassist, across Italy and Austria before eventually settling in Madrid. His decision to remain in Spain was largely personal: while in Paris, Boccherini fell in love with an Italian singer, Clementina Pelliccia, who was touring with a Spanish opera company. When she returned to Spain in 1768, Boccherini followed and stayed for the rest of his life.
In 1770, Boccherini entered the service of Don Luis, brother to the Spanish king, and it was under this aristocratic patronage that he composed much of his chamber music. Though better known for his quintets (often featuring two cellos), his quartets like the F minor Quartet, G. 200 offer a fascinating glimpse into his distinctive style.
This is music written by a string player, for string players. The textures are rich and idiomatic, with an unmistakable warmth in the cello writing. Boccherini thought in flowing, melodic lines and long-breathed phrases and emphasis on the interplay of texture. In this quartet, phrases
spill gently over the bar lines, and rhythm is often softened by syncopation or subtle metrical shifts creating an elegant fluidity that seems to dissolve the pulse rather than define it.
The key of F minor lends a sense of poignancy and restraint. While Boccherini is often associated with grace and charm, this quartet suggests something deeper: a composer blending courtly elegance with introspective lyricism. The result is a work of understated beauty refined, expressive, and uniquely his own.
Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)
String Quartet in B flat major Op. 76 No. 4 Sunrise
Allegro con spirito
Adagio
Menuet: Allegro
Allegro ma non troppo
When Haydn began work on his six string quartets Op.76 in 1796, he was 64 years old. In the late 18th century, when average life-expectancy was in the mid-to-late 40s, that was a remarkable age for a composer to be working at all. But for an elderly composer to be writing music that was so adventurous, so imaginative and so joyously, vibrantly alive – well, contemporaries were left struggling for words.
The English music historian Charles Burney, hearing these quartets for the first time in 1799, summed up the general reaction: They are full of invention, fire, good taste, and new effects, and seem the production, not of a sublime genius who has written so much and so well already, but of one of highlycultivated talents, who had expended none of his fire before.
Beethoven’s first six string quartets, published in 1801, sound almost clumsy by comparison. “Papa” Haydn, in his mid-60s, was still running rings around his pupils. And if you wanted to choose just one of these six quartets to demonstrate exactly why, many players would point you straight to this one.
The fourth quartet of the set takes its nickname from the long, ascending melody at the very opening of the work. It sounds so effortless and natural that the comparison with a sunrise suggested itself easily to the work’s earliest listeners; that the second subject is simply this opening theme turned upside down is a magnificent example of Haydn’s mature imagination finding the unexpected within the (superficially) obvious.
The Adagio is one of Haydn’s great hymn-like late slow movements; a gentle sextuplet-figure brings poignancy to the central and closing sections. The Menuet, as so often in Haydn, is more of a scherzo than a courtly dance, and this one has a hint of waltz-rhythm about it, while the Trio evokes the pungent folk-harmonies of Haydn’s rural youth. Haydn concludes with a brief but dazzlingly-worked sonata finale, rounded off by an unusually lengthy coda that actually increases in inventiveness and brilliance as it speeds towards the finish. This sun has well and truly risen.
Richard Bratby