Hameline/JSQ: Program Notes

(Juilliard Qt) Notes on the Program

By Aaron Grad FRANZ JOSEF HAYDN Born in Rohrau, Austria, March 31, 1732 Died in Vienna, May 31, 1809 STRING QUARTET IN D MAJOR, OP. 76, NO. 5 (HOB. III:79) Composed in 1796-97; 21 minutes Haydn was one of the first composers to write for a chamber ensemble of two violins, viola and cello, and his 68 works in that format helped to establish the string quartet as a chamber music mainstay. He produced his first 10 quartets in the 1760s, with some maybe even predating his hiring in 1761 by the wealthy Esterházy family. Thirty years later Haydn was the most famous composer in the world, and his business model had morphed from satisfying one demanding patron with private entertainment to juggling a variety of international commissions and publishing deals. He usually released quartets in sets of six, and his last complete set, from 1797, started as a commission from a Hungarian patron, Count Joseph Erdödy. Haydn agreed to give the count two years of exclusive use of the quartets, but as soon as that period was up, the enterprising and not entirely scrupulous composer sold the scores to competing publishing firms in London and Vienna, which both released editions in 1799, printed as Opus 76.

In the wake of two visits to London, where his audacious new symphonies made such a strong impression, Haydn’s quartets became bolder and more experimental than ever. The String Quartet in D Major (Op. 76, No. 5) tests a less-is-more approach, starting with a first movement that elaborates one modest theme in a relaxed allegretto tempo. Instead of a typical sonata-allegro form with its opposing key centers, this streamlined plan simply moves the recognizable theme to the minor key and then back to the original major, ending with one last variant energized by a quicker tempo and contrapuntal volleys.

The de-emphasized first movement places the focus on this quartet’s gorgeous Largo, which Haydn marked Cantabile e mesto (“singing and sad”). Again, the entire movement essentially uses one theme, always recognizable by the leaps at the beginning that spell a triad, whether major or minor.

After the slow movement’s distant key setting of F-sharp major, the Menuetto returns to the familiar terrain of D major. It starts with a rising, four-note figure that spells out exactly the same triadic leaps as in the preceding movement, confirming this quartet’s interconnection and elevating Haydn’s thematic efficiency to a new level. (His young rival Beethoven was certainly taking notes.) The finale’s fiddle tunes and coursing drones demonstrate yet another way to make so much happen with just a few notes.

GYÖRGY KURTÁG Born in Lugoj, Romania, February 19, 1926 SIX MOMENTS MUSICAUX, OP. 44 Composed in 1999-2005; 25 minutes

Born in Romania to Hungarian parents, György Kurtág moved in 1946 to Budapest, where he followed a musical path blazed earlier in the century by Béla Bartók. It was not until 1957, during a year of study in Paris, that Kurtág encountered the modern styles that had failed to penetrate the Iron Curtain. He took lessons from Messiaen and Milhaud, and he also transcribed many of Webern’s scores, gleaning that composer’s gifts of concision while mostly rejecting the underlying 12-tone orthodoxy.

Kurtág reached an impasse in the late 1960s, and he only found his way back to a productive method of composing after he was invited to contribute to a collection of piano pieces for children in 1973. Ever since, the short and whimsical piano works he has collected under the title Játékok (“Games”)— spanning nine published volumes as of 2017—have formed the core of his output, generating methods and raw material that inform all of his larger works.

Completed in 2005, Kurtág’s six “musical moments” for string quartet are full of winking historical references and self-reflections, much like his many short piano “games.” The title points to the piano miniatures that Schubert collected under the title Moments Musicaux, and other heroes arise in oblique ways: the second section, “Footfalls” borrows its title from a play by Samuel Beckett, a major influence on Kurtág; the fourth movement, a tribute to a pianist friend, subtly invokes their shared regard for Bach; the birdcalls of the fifth movement echo the avian obsession of Kurtág’s teacher Messiaen; the finale, “Les adieux,” calls to mind Beethoven’s piano sonata that goes by the same nickname, with an additional nod to Janacek and his halting, speech-like utterances. To namecheck so many outside elements might seem like a recipe for creating something trivial and scattered, but Kurtág’s real gift is how he finds his truest, most essential self inside these vast halls of mirrors he loves to erect.

ANTONIN DVOŘÁK Born in Nelahozeves, Bohemia, September 8, 1841 Died in Prague, May 1, 1904 PIANO QUINTET NO. 2 IN A MAJOR, OP. 81 Composed in 1887; 40 minutes Dvořák might have been stuck forever in Prague, underpaid and unknown to the world, had it not been for an intervention on his behalf by Brahms, who set Dvořák up with his publisher in 1877. A decade later, the Czech composer was an international star, beloved for such works as the Slavonic Dances that embraced the folk music of his homeland.

Throughout his career, Dvořák followed the example of Brahms and grappled with the old, established forms of chamber music, a tradition that extended back through Schumann and Mendelssohn to Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. As a violist himself, Dvořák proved to be especially well-attuned to the genre, whether writing for string quartet (a format that long flummoxed Brahms) or an ensemble such as the piano quintet, combining piano and string quartet.

Dvořák wrote his first Piano Quintet in A Major in 1872 but withdrew it after the premiere. He started to revise that score in 1887, and then decided to just start fresh on a new piano quintet in the same key.

What resulted was one of the crowning gems of the chamber music repertoire, a work that balanced Dvořák’s intuitive feel for melody, his mastery of formal construction and his celebration of his Czech roots.

The opening melody for cello, accompanied only by piano, sets a relaxed tone for the quintet, until the full ensemble steps on the cello’s last note and counters with a forceful theme in A minor. The tonal dichotomy, torn between A major and A minor, plays out throughout the first movement and sets up a larger context for the whole work. That pattern relates back to Czech folk music, a link that becomes more explicit in the second movement, which Dvorak identified as a “Dumka”—a Slavic term, with Ukrainian origins, for a type of folk music characterized by wild mood swings.

After two substantial movements spanning 25 minutes or more, a spirited scherzo clears the air with music in the style of a “Furiant,” a fast Czech dance. As in the Dumka, pizzicato passages bring the ensemble closer to the plucking and strumming of folk music, like the sound of the zither that Dvořák’s father played. The finale once again straddles major and minor modes, and it marries rustic dance rhythms with the more studious aspects of Dvořák’s craft, even incorporating a proper fugue. © 2019 Aaron Grad