4 QUARTETS (Tchaikovsky, Haydn, Verdi, Malipiero) - Leontovitch String Quartet

TCHAIKOVSKY VERDI HAYDN MALIPIERO QUARTETS

QUARTETTO DI VENEZIA LEONTOVICH STRING QUARTET

HAYDN: String Quartet in G Minor, Op. 74, No. 3

I. Allegro 04:49

II. Largo assai 06:57

III. Meneutto: Allegro 03:03

IV. Finale: Allegro con brio 03:40

TCHAIKOVSKY: String Quartet No. 2 in F Major, Op. 22

I. Adagio, Moderato assai 13:01

II. Scherzo: Allegro giusto 06:19

III. Andante ma non troppo 11:35

IV. Finale: Allegro con moto 06:51

LEONTOVICH STRING QUARTET

MALIPIERO: String Quartet No. 2 "Stornelle e Ballete"

Section 1 07:12

Section 2 09:21

Section 3 06:42

VERDI: String Quartet in E Minor

I. Allegro 08:23

II. Andantino 08:12

III. Prestissimo 03:15

IV. Scherzo Fuga: Allegro assai mosso 04:45

After his first trip to England, Joseph Haydn busily prepared for another visit and composed six string quartets, which were published as opp. 71 & 74 in sets of three each. H. Robbins Landon, in his exhaustive study of Haydn’s works, wrote that they were “composed deliberately for the concert hall...Haydn paints with a broad brush. The immensely sophisticated, slow paced, almost epicurean unfolding of the 1790 work (op. 64, no. 1) is constrasted with the the high-powered, nervous brilliance of the 1793 pieces...Everything about the ”Salomon-Apponyi' quartets is more intense”

Composed at a time when Haydn was interested in orchestral composition, the G minor Quartet and its siblings have an orchestral character. The opening movement has contrapuntal episodes between the energetic first theme and a liltingly graceful second theme. Although G minor is often associated with tragedy, it is not found here. The słow movement begins with in a variant of the first section. The Menuetto is in G major, although the Trio is in the minor mode. The Finale, a sonata-form construction, also varies the modes-the first theme being minor while the second is major.

“It is my best work: not one of them has come to me so easily and fluently as this. I completed it as it were at one sitting. " Thus wrote Peter I. Tchaikovsky about his Second Ouartet. A slow introduction prefaces the work and presents an intense expression in rising and falling chromatic notes and a florid line for the first violin. The ensuing first movement is uneasily restless and very chromatic.

The Scherzo uses a pattern of two bars of 6/8 followed by one bar of 9/8 which alternate con sistently to form a seven-beat unit typical of some Russian music. The Trio, on the other hand. is a graceful waltz with accented second beats. The slow movement is a three-part form with coda and relies on motifs, particularly a falling dotted one. The final movement is a rondo, again highly chromatic, with a fugue near the close. The fugue subject had been announced earlier in the move ment as a short, unison introduction.

The Italian Gian Francesco Malipiero had a predeliction for unadorned line, a need for brevity, and a horror of development that is apparent in a work virtually made up of themes alone. His was a style of succinct dramatic elocution that may be compared reasonably to speech compounded almost entirely of verbs, as the only words capable of expressing action.

"Stornellie Ballate" (with its companion "Rispetti e Strambotti") represents Malipiero's re-creation of ltalian bucolic verse, just as his Cantari alla Madrigalesca" pays homage to the more urban madrigals. As in all his works, the title, even when not bearing a precise extramusical meaning, is not intended to convey literal programmatic content, and the composer noted that this title has led to false interpretations.

Albert C. Sly

Giuseppe Verdi’s String Quartet is something of an anomaly in the catalog-and that’s putting it mildly. It is Verdi’s only piece of chamber music; indeed, it is the only important instrumental work from the composer’s maturity. Why did Verdi - a man who expended almost all of his creative energy on operas (and an unusually operatic Requiem Mass)suddenly set to writing a string quartet in March 1873? The answer is simple and not very romantic: he wrote the quartet to kill time. Verdi was in Naples to supervise the local premiere of Aida; when the rehearsals were held up (due to the illness of soprano Teresa Stolz) he used the delay to fashion the four movements of the quartet.

Verdi, who was then 60 years old and at the height of his fane, always insisted that he composed the quartet for his private diversion, and he initially refused to allow any public performances. Finally, in 1876, it was published and has since earned a modest but secure place in the repertoire.

Verdi’s quartet is expertly made, full of busy counterpoint, direct and convincing in its emotional argument. Many claim to hear echoes of Aida in the opening movement, while there is an unusually Viennese quality to the theme and variations in the following Andantino. The Scherzo, marked “Prestissimo, ” is compact and quicksilver in its succession of moods, while the Finale prefigures the melodious chatter of the closing fugue of Falstaff.

The Leontovitch String Quartet, formed in 1971, made its American debut at Music Mountain in 1988.

Members of the quartet are Semen Kobets and Yuri Kharenko, violins, Voctor Barabanov, viola, and Volodimir Panteleev, cello. In 1978, the quartet took part in the 16th Leo Weiner Interna tional Contest cf string quartets, became its laureate, and performed to critical acclaim at the second International Festival of Quartets at Vilnius. Its repertoire includes not only classical works, but com positions by modern composers, especially those of the quartet’s native Ukraine: Lyatoshinsky, Skoryk, Silvestrov, Karabytz, and Shamo.

The Quartetto di Venezia, formed in 1981 by four graduates of the Benedetto Marcello Conservatory in Venice, is one of Italy’s prominent quartets. Its members, Alberto Vio and Alberto Battiston, violins, Luca Morassutti, viola, and Angelo Zanin, cello, studied with pedagogues Sirico Piovesan and Sandor Vegh of the Vegh Quartet, and were nominated as the best ensemble in Vegh’s master class in Assisi. The quartet has traveled extensively in Europe and the Americas, and was chosen to represent Italian chamber music in Buenos Aires during the Festival Italia ’86. The Quartetto di Venezia was chosen to play the premiere performance of two Boccherini quartets recently discovered in Washington.

Tim Page