W I S C O N S I N U N I O N T H E AT E R
IN-PERSON & VIRTUAL
DAVID AND KATO PERLMAN CHAMBER MUSIC SERIES
EMERSON STRING QUARTET Eugene Drucker, Violin | Philip Setzer, Violin Lawrence Dutton, Viola | Paul Watkins, Cello
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 24 | 7:30 PM SHANNON HALL AT MEMORIAL UNION
This performance is made possible by the David and Kato Perlman Chamber Music Fund. SUPPORT FOR THE 2022–2023 CONCERT SERIES PROVIDED IN PART BY: Bill and Char Johnson Classical Music Series Fund Charles Cohen
Christine Beatty
David and Kato Perlman Chamber Music Fund
Douglas and Elisabeth B. Weaver Fund for Performing Arts Dr. Linda I. Garrity Living Legends Endowment Fund Fan Taylor Fund
Mead Witter School of Music Michael Hoon
Penny Hubbard Sam Coe
Stephen Morton Terry Moen
Wisconsin Union Theater Endowment
PROGRAMMED BY THE PERFORMING ARTS COMMITTEE The Wisconsin Union Directorate Performing Arts Committee (WUD PAC) is a student-run organization that brings world-class artists to campus by programming the Wisconsin Union Theater’s annual season of events. WUD PAC focuses on pushing range and diversity in its programming while connecting to students and the broader Madison community. In addition to planning the Wisconsin Union Theater’s season, WUD PAC programs and produces student-centered events, such as the New Performance Showcase. WUD PAC makes it a priority to connect students to performing artists through educational engagement activities and more. WUD PAC is part of the Wisconsin Union Directorate’s Leadership and Engagement Program and is central to the Wisconsin Union’s purpose of developing the leaders of tomorrow and creating community in a place where all belong. 2
EMERSON STRING QUARTET SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2022
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827)
Quartet in E Minor, Op. 59, No. 2, “Razumovsky” (1806) Allegro Molto Adagio: Si tratta questo pezzo molto di sentimento Allegretto—Maggiore, Thème russe Finale: Presto
INTERMISSION Ludwig van Beethoven
Quartet in B-flat Major, Op. 130 (1825) Adagio ma non troppo—Allegro Presto Andante con moto ma non troppo Alla danza tedesca: Allegro assai Cavatina: Adagio molto espressivo Grosse Fuge: Allegro
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Ludwig van Beethoven, the Legend Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) has long held the title of the greatest composer of Western classical music. For many, his iconic Fifth Symphony—or even just its opening four-note motive—has come to symbolize the totality of classical music. His personality and psychology as a revolutionary who suffered from his own otherworldly artistic gifts has become the model for our modern concept of genius. In the 250 years since his birth, his reputation has accrued layer upon layer of significance and often contradictory modes of appreciation from diverse communities. While Beethoven’s legend certainly began to take shape in his own lifetime—E. T. A. Hoffman heralded his music as a pathway to spiritual transcendence—the currency his name carries today can mislead. He was neither the most famous or well-regarded composer of his own time: That honor went to Italian opera composer Giacomo Rossini. Beethoven’s own failure at opera—his only one, Fidelio, never succeeded and even today is rarely heard—lowered him in the critical estimation below other now-forgotten opera composers. While he did not live in obscurity, Beethoven’s works were not all deemed unimpeachable masterpieces, either. Many, not just Fidelio, received mixed reviews from audiences and critics, including both quartets on this evening’s program. His entire late period (starting around 1813) was initially deemed a time of sickness and decay after his flourishing middle period. Forty years after Beethoven’s death, Richard Wagner, who romanticized the social isolation Beethoven experienced as a deaf man in a hearing (and prejudiced) world, rehabilitated the late works by reinterpreting their increasing interiority as the composer learned to listen inwardly when he could no longer hear outwardly. Since then, Beethoven’s music has only further ascended in appreciation among audiences eager to delve into his expansive revolutionary style.
Beethoven’s Symphonic Ideal Meets a String Quartet Reality Beethoven’s music entered its “heroic” middle period in 1802. In this period, he developed a new “symphonic ideal” in which large-scale instrumental works—specifically symphonies—focused on musical development across many movements with a greater integration of sonata form across the entirety of a work. He achieved this expansion by returning to the fundamentals of musical composition and attempting to reconceptualize those ideas to reach beyond their limits. In practical terms, this meant that Beethoven’s works exploded in length and scope, and his music began to convey both psychological evolution and organic continuity. Although conceived around the symphony, Beethoven applied his “symphonic ideal” broadly to all other genres in his middle period. The application of those principles to the intimate realm of chamber music received mixed appreciation from audiences, specifically with the three “Razumovsky” string quartets of Op. 59. Commissioned by Count Andrey Razumovsky, a Russian ambassador in Vienna, the three Op. 59 quartets saw Beethoven take an expansive approach to the string quartet genre with a certain disregard for the expectations of his audience and his patron. The works were meant to include Russian folk songs at the request of the Count, but Beethoven—never one to be told what to do—only integrated a thème russe in a single movement of the first and second quartets, and then invented a Russian-style tune for Quartet No. 3. What he did deliver, however, were three quartets that pushed the conventional limits of the genre. For audiences primed to hear a Classical string quartet, these works left many confused, leaving one early reviewer to call them “profoundly conceived and exquisitely composed, but not generally comprehensible.”
Quartet in E Minor, Op. 59, No. 2, “Razumovsky” The clearest indication of Beethoven’s application of his symphonic ideal in the Quartet in E Minor is the sheer size of the work. The first three movements each last between 10 and 12 minutes with a short finale movement to close. The proportions of the movements suggest Beethoven extrapolated the principles of sonata form to the entire work. If a sonata-form movement generally 4
features three main sections—exposition, development, and recapitulation—with a short closing coda, this quartet’s movements similarly approach that organizational scale. After two declarative beats that ground the key, the Allegro in 6/8 starts with several searching phrases that lead into briefly tuneful moments, as though the music were finding its own footing. When it does, the repeating eighth-note accompaniment immediately establishes a turbulent style: This is a moody Romantic work, not a genteel Classical quartet. Beethoven proceeds to interrupt himself, and almost immediately lets his musical ideas develop and grow before even fully stating them. In the brief second theme, which becomes significant as an audible signpost as the work goes on, Beethoven uses a syncopated rhythm to shift the meter to 3/4, further destabilizing the music. The second movement, a lumbering Adagio, shifts the mood from turbulence to gloom. In the second theme, Beethoven for the first time writes music that may be called truly tuneful and melodic, and while the melody has lightened to something less destitute than the beginning, it remains plaintive and longing, reminiscent of an opera aria. Conventional second movements often feature a truncated sonata form, focusing on beautiful melodies. Beethoven, however, cannot resist but take the listeners on a journey ripe with high drama and thematic development. After the effusive Adagio, the dance movement (in a minuet-and-trio form) is refreshingly light and rhythmic. The initial section resembles a mazurka with its discombobulated melody emphasizing beats two and three of the triple meter. As in the first movement, the music does not feel stable, but rather awkwardly and asymmetrically stumbles forward. The instability finds contrast in the trio, which features the only Russian folk song of the work, with a simple melodic emphasis on the downbeat. After three powerhouse movements, the Finale is wisely sweet and simple. The quick tempo and staccato dotted rhythms propel the movement forward; virtuosic embellishments from each of the instruments maintain interest. First Violin: Philip Setzer Performance Time: approximately 34 minutes
Beethoven’s Late Style and the Late Quartets The mixed success of his symphonic ideal in non-symphonic genres led Beethoven to continue to focus on public works through his middle period. In his late period, Beethoven became increasingly interested in variation techniques, such as fugues, and began integrating them universally across his work, something he explored in more private genres of chamber music. If the middle period was defined by Beethoven’s experiments with the sonata form—taking it apart and reassembling it in new ways—the late period instead questions that very act of reconstruction with music that often seems to narrate its own process of composition. This led him to compose the infamous Grosse Fuge, which originally concluded the Quartet in B-flat Major, Op. 130. The story of the Grosse Fuge stands as a metaphor for much of Beethoven’s late period. Audiences at the time deemed the Grosse Fuge too complex and difficult. In response, Beethoven excised the work and composed a new, simpler finale. (He published the Grosse Fuge separately as Op. 133.) It was not until the 20th century that audiences came to appreciate the Grosse Fuge as a masterpiece: Igor Stravinsky described it as eternally modern music, sounding fresh even a century after its composition. Now, along with the rest of Beethoven’s late string quartets, the work has been championed as perhaps the pinnacle of composition in Western classical music, and in this evening’s performance, the Emerson String Quartet reinstates the Grosse Fuge as the finale of Op. 130.
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String Quartet in B-flat Major, Op. 130, and Grosse Fuge, Op. 133 The auspicious reputation of the late string quartets and the Grosse Fuge can easily make this quartet seem intimidating. However, setting aside the bookend movements that illustrate the “difficulty” of the late style, the inner movements of the work are surprisingly cogent. That said, the opening movement alone features such rapid successions of ideas that its framing of the entire work cannot be understated, and the Grosse Fuge finale offers less a feeling of closure than an invitation for continued deep contemplation. The first movement juxtaposes slow triple-meter phrases with fast duple-meter in rapid succession, contrasting a searching and emergent style with a decisive and stable one. Throughout, the connections between these two styles remain obtuse, and the contrast sharpens as phrases become shorter and more associative. Only in the development section does Beethoven write tuneful melodies, but they, too, remain fleeting. Emblematic of Beethoven’s late period, the entire movement sounds unmoored, as distinct musical ideas come and go without clear threads tethering them together. After the experimental first movement, the second movement—a scherzo marked Presto—cuts through the fog with Beethoven at his most decisive. The quick tempo and clarity of melody and harmony are quite simply jolting in comparison to what came before. Of course, Beethoven still interrupts himself at times, but in this concise movement, these moments feel more impatient than disruptive. By the third movement, Beethoven has found his way. It is overtly Classical in style, immediate and clear, with moments of real charm that serve as a reminder that Beethoven was once Haydn’s student. The development section experiments with the melodies while never wandering too far. Throughout, Beethoven abates harmonic and rhythmic tension almost as soon as he introduces it, ending with a simple flourish. Continuing the Classicism of the previous movement, the fourth movement is another triplemeter movement, this time “in the style of a German dance” (alla danza tedesca). Only slightly longer than the scherzo, it plays easy and balanced with a clear division between melody and accompaniment. The entire movement remains strikingly dispassionate for any Romantic composer, let alone Beethoven. The Cavatina (a term for a slow-tempo opera aria) returns to the emotional Romantic spirit with an appropriately songlike melody that suggests lowercase-“r” romance. The melody leaps dramatically and leans into dissonances for maximum expressiveness resembling Rossini. The overall sentimentality of the movement finds only brief resistance toward the end as Beethoven returns to some dissociated melodic fragments that leave a kernel of uncertainty about how all this will resolve. Enter the Grosse Fuge, Op. 133. After the previous four movements showed Beethoven writing in strikingly reserved styles, the 14-minute “grand fugue” is indeed a different species. The opening dotted rhythms shatter the quiet sentimentality of the Cavatina. In Beethoven’s hands, fugal writing becomes a vehicle for the symphonic ideal. The movement breaks down into several discrete sections in diverse styles. While slow sections create space to take pause, the brash interjections and frantic pace quickly overshadow any calm. Long associated in musical discourse with highest echelons of learning and sophistication, the fugue provides structure for the divergent ideas within the not only movement but the entire quartet. Yet the Grosse Fuge remains so open to complexity that it becomes almost a drastic attempt to reign everything in, a musical analogue to a complete theory of all things, as only Beethoven could attempt. First Violin: Eugene Drucker Performance Time: approximately 47 minutes —Eric Lubarsky 6
EMERSON STRING QUARTET The Emerson String Quartet has maintained its status as one of the world’s premier chamber music ensembles for more than four decades. “With musicians like this,” wrote a reviewer for The Times (London), “there must be some hope for humanity.” The quartet has made more than 30 acclaimed recordings and has been honored with nine Grammy Awards (including two for Best Classical Album), three Gramophone Awards, the Avery Fisher Prize, and Musical America’s “Ensemble of the Year” award. Keeping the string quartet form alive and relevant, the Emerson String Quartet collaborates with some of today’s most esteemed composers to premiere new works. The group has partnered in performance with such stellar artists as Barbara Hannigan, Evgeny Kissin, Emanuel Ax, and Yefim Bronfman, to name a few. In the 2021–2022 season, the quartet gave the New York premiere of André Previn’s Penelope at Carnegie Hall alongside soprano Renée Fleming, actress Uma Thurman, and pianist Simone Dinnerstein, before reprising the program in a concert at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. In addition to touring major American venues, the quartet returned to the Chamber Music Society of Louisville, where it completed the second half of a Beethoven cycle begun in the spring of 2020. This year, the quartet embarks on a six-city tour of Europe with stops in Athens, Madrid, Pisa, Florence, Milan, and London’s Southbank Centre, where the Emerson will perform a complete Shostakovich cycle, one of the staples in its repertoire. The quartet’s extensive discography includes the complete string quartets of Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Bartók, Webern, and Shostakovich, as well as multi-CD sets of the major works of Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, and Dvořák. In 2018, Deutsche Grammophon issued a box of the Emerson’s complete recordings for the label. In October 2020, the group released a recording of Robert Schumann’s three string quartets for the Pentatone label. In the preceding year, the quartet joined forces with Grammy-winning pianist Evgeny Kissin to release their debut collaborative album for Deutsche Grammophon, recorded live at a sold-out Carnegie Hall concert in 2018. Formed in 1976 and based in New York City, the Emerson String Quartet was one of the first quartets to have its violinists alternate in the first chair position. The quartet, which takes its name from American poet and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, balances busy performing careers with a commitment to teaching, and serves as quartet-in-residence at Stony Brook University. In 2013, cellist Paul Watkins—a distinguished soloist, award-winning conductor, and devoted chamber musician—joined the original members of the quartet to form today’s group. In the spring of 2016, the State University of New York awarded full-time Stony Brook faculty members Philip Setzer and Lawrence Dutton the status of Distinguished Professor and conferred the title of Honorary Distinguished Professor on part-time faculty members Eugene Drucker and Paul Watkins. The quartet’s members also hold honorary doctorates from Middlebury College, the College of Wooster, Bard College, and the University of Hartford. In January 2015, the quartet received the Richard J. Bogomolny National Service Award, Chamber Music America’s highest honor, in recognition of its significant and lasting contribution to the chamber music field. Emerson String Quartet appears by arrangement with IMG Artists, LLC, 7 West 54th Street, New York, NY 10019 212-994-3500
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THANK YOU TO OUR GENEROUS DONORS FOR SUPPORTING THE WISCONSIN UNION THEATER André De Shields
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COMING UP IN
FALL 2022 MANHATTAN CHAMBER PLAYERS Thursday, September 29 7:30 PM Shannon Hall at Memorial Union
SOWETO GOSPEL CHOIR Saturday, October 8 7:30 PM Shannon Hall at Memorial Union
JOEL ROSS GOOD VIBES Sunday, October 16 7:30 PM Play Circle at Memorial Union
WE’RE HIRING! Do you know a student who is interested in working at a dynamic performing arts theater in the heart of campus? We have exciting positions available in the box office, front of house, and stage crew starting at $15 per hour. Learn more about our available positions at union.wisc.edu/jobs. • Box office clerks assist customers with purchasing tickets and processing transactions, and handle patron questions and concerns with care. • House managers handle the front-of-house experience and the usher team for individual events.
Starting at
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