Belcea Quartet - Program Notes

Notes on the Program

By Aaron Grad String Quartet in F Major, Op. 18, No. 1 [1798-1800] LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN Born December 1770 in Bonn, Germany Died March 26, 1827 in Vienna, Austria In 1792, Beethoven left his hometown of Bonn for what was meant to be a temporary stay in Vienna, so he could, as his patron put it, “receive Mozart’s spirit from Haydn’s hands.” Beethoven did study briefly with Haydn, but he abandoned his plan to return home once he saw that he could follow in Mozart’s footsteps and make a living as a freelance pianist. Beethoven’s composing during those first years in Vienna naturally centered on his own keyboard instrument, and he shied away from two genres in particular that were dominated by Haydn: symphonies and string quartets. Beethoven finally came out with his first set of six quartets in 1800, published as his Opus 18, and he released his Symphony No. 1 later in that same breakout year.

Beethoven chose to place his String Quartet in F Major at the head of the Opus 18 set. It was actually the second quartet he completed, and he ended up rewriting it so substantially that he told the friend to whom he sent the first version, “Don’t let anyone see your quartet as I have greatly changed it, as only now do I know how to write quartets properly.” Starting with the quiet, balanced phrases that begin the Allegro con brio first movement, the F-major Quartet shows itself to be fully in command of Haydn’s crisp and orderly style, and yet the seeds of Beethoven’s independence are already sown, like in the way the simple turn and leap of that initial motive generates an obsessive array of new permutations.

The same friend who received the early draft of the quartet later recounted that Beethoven took inspiration for the slow movement from the tomb scene in Romeo and Juliet. There are echoes of Mozart in the singing melodies of this “tender and passionate” Adagio in D minor, but the most heart-stopping moments are really the pregnant silences and punctuated chords.

Going beyond the jolly minuet that Haydn popularized as a third-movement diversion, Beethoven adopted faster tempos and wilder effects in his preferred form, the Scherzo (“joke” in Italian). This example exhibits unusual restraint in its mostly quiet dynamics, saving the biggest outburst for the squawking octaves of the contrasting trio section.

Before Beethoven attempted string quartets, trios with a single violin had been a crucial proving ground, especially the three that he published in 1798 as Opus 9. He was clearly pleased with the effect of starting a finale with a disorienting slur, since he lifted that idea from the last movement of his C-minor Trio (Op. 9, No. 3) and recast it in F major to begin this quartet’s playful finale.

String Quartet No. 13 in B-flat Major, Op. 130 [1825-6] LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN As Beethoven’s stature grew, and as his hearing faded, he entered the “middle period” of his career when he produced his most heroic symphonies along with five groundbreaking quartets, from the extraordinarily long “Razumovsky” Quartets of 1806 to the shockingly terse “Serioso” Quartet from 1810. There was then a long gap between quartets until the mystical “late period” when Beethoven, cut off from the world and retreating into an introspective musical life, produced five more quartets plus a spare finale between 1824 and his death in 1827.

The String Quartet in B-flat Major (Op. 130) was one of three late quartets that Beethoven wrote for Prince Nikolay Galitzin, a nobleman and amateur cellist in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Having finished the String Quartet in A Minor (Op. 132) during a visit to the spa town of Baden in the summer of 1825, Beethoven launched directly into his next quartet in B-flat and finished it in November. In its original version that debuted in March of 1826, the six-movement form culminated with a massive finale in the form of a fugue, but it left the public so flummoxed that Beethoven’s publisher asked for a replacement finale before the score went into print. Beethoven accepted the request (and the additional fee), and he wrote the new finale in November of 1826, with the discarded movement finding new life as the standalone Grosse Fuge, printed as Opus 133. He fell ill soon thereafter and died in March, leaving that extra quartet movement as the swan song of his epic career.

This performance honors Beethoven’s original intention and returns the Grosse Fuge to its original position as the finale of Opus 130. Well before that point, the quartet’s nontraditional shape makes itself apparent, when the expected pairing of a slow introduction and a fast body of the movement turns out to be not quite what it seems. The two tempos teeter back and forth, leaving the matter unsettled all the way to the closing phrases.

After the whiplash of the large opening movement, the middle movements roll out a series of contrasting miniatures. We could still be basically on script for a typical quartet after the manic Presto and the relaxed third movement, which inflects its earnest tunefulness with a bit of winking humor, as per the marking poco scherzoso. But then we get an unexpected extra pair of interior movements: first a small dance in a traditional German style, and then an expressive Cavatina (a term for a short, simple song) that treats the first violinist like a surrogate for a female singer.

When Beethoven received word that the Viennese audience was less than appreciative of the fugal finale at the quartet’s premiere in 1826, his characteristic response was to declare them “cattle” and “asses!” But in all fairness, not even the most sophisticated concertgoer would ever have encountered anything like this giant movement, which has as many heads growing out of one serpentine body as the mythical Hydra. The introductory overture (a surprising element borrowed from theater music) announces the unsettled mood immediately with an angular opening line, declaimed in stark octaves and

straining toward the very edges of tonality, until it breaks off suddenly after a trill. On the first page of the score alone, there are three different key signatures and meters, as well as five held pauses, all before the first fugue even begins. That initial course of counterpoint is an unrelenting assault of pounding rhythms, daring leaps, and full-throttle volume. A sweet response follows, reusing some of the same themes in a flowing section marked sempre pianissimo (“always very quiet”). Each new section shows another face—a lively dance in triple meter, a hushed chorale, a series of hovering trills—but the distinct music from the fugue binds everything together into one incomparable whole. © 2019 Aaron Grad.