Tokyo String Quartet

Tokyo String Quartet chamber music society at yale David Shifrin, Artistic Director october 20 2009 music of Haydn Beethoven Bart贸k

Robert Blocker, Dean

october 20, 2009 · 8 pm Morse Recital Hall in Sprague Memorial Hall

Tokyo String Quartet martin beaver, violin kikuei ikeda, violin kazuhide isomura, viola clive greensmith, cello

Franz Joseph Haydn 1732-1809

Quartet in D major, Op. 76, No. 5 Allegretto Largo: Cantabile e mesto Menuetto: Allegro Finale: Presto

Ludwig van Beethoven 1770-1827

Quartet in F minor, Op. 95, “Serioso” Allegro con brio Allegretto ma non troppo Allegro assai vivace ma serioso Larghetto—Allegretto agitato intermission

Belá Bartók 1880-1945

String Quartet No. 6, Sz. 114 (1939) Mesto—Vivace Mesto—Marcia Mesto—Burletta: Moderato Mesto

As a courtesy to the performers and audience members, turn off cell phones and pagers. Please do not leave the theater during selections. Photography or recording of any kind is not permitted.

(pictured from left to right)

Clive Greensmith, cello · Kazuhide Isomura, viola Kikuei Ikeda, violin · Martin Beaver, violin

The Tokyo String Quartet has captivated audiences and critics alike since it was founded almost 40 years ago. Regarded as one of the supreme chamber ensembles of the world, the Tokyo Quartet – Martin Beaver and Kikuei Ikeda (violins), Kazuhide Isomura (viola) and Clive Greensmith (cello) — has collaborated with a remarkable array of artists and composers, built a comprehensive catalogue of critically acclaimed recordings and established a distinguished teaching record. Performing over a hundred concerts worldwide each season, the Tokyo String Quartet has a devoted international following that includes the major capitals of the world and extends to all four corners, from Australia to Estonia to Scandinavia and the Far East.

The ensemble now records on the Harmonia Mundi label.

The members of the Tokyo String Quartet have served on the faculty of the Yale School of Music as quartet-in-residence since 1976. Deeply committed to coaching young string quartets, they devote much of the summer to teaching and performing at the prestigious Norfolk Chamber Music Festival. They also conduct master classes in North America, Europe and the Far East throughout the year.

The ensemble performs on the “Paganini Quartet,” a group of renowned Stradivarius instruments named for legendary virtuoso Niccolò Paganini, who acquired and played them during the 19th century. The instruments Officially formed in 1969 at the Juilliard School have been on loan to the ensemble from the of Music, the quartet traces its origins to the Nippon Music Foundation since 1995, when Toho School of Music in Tokyo, where the they were purchased from the Corcoran Gallery founding members were profoundly influenced of Art in Washington, D.C.

by Professor Hideo Saito. Soon after its formation, the quartet won First Prize at the Coleman Competition, the Munich Competition, and the Young Concert Artists International Auditions. An exclusive contract with Deutsche Grammophon firmly established it as one of the world's leading quartets, and it has since released more than 40 landmark recordings.

franz joseph haydn Quartet in D major, Op. 76, N0. 5

u Program notes by Jacob Cooper

is nearly twice as long as each of the other movements), but because of its F-sharp major key signature. Indeed, the 18th century critic Wilhelm Heinse had just labeled this tonality “on the outer limits of the musical world,” and its usage in chamber music at the time was exceedingly rare. That Haydn indicates “mesto” (sad) at the top of the movement suggests that At the time Haydn began work on the commis- this odd key carried more emotional pathos sion, he had mainly been writing vocal music. than the more standard major keys.

He may have seen the familiar string quartet genre as an outlet for experimentation, much as While the straightforward Menuetto does not the late Beethoven did. Haydn renders the first diverge from the standards of the time, the movement of the D major quartet unusual by Presto immediately grabs the listener’s attention abandoning the traditional sonata form. Though with witty opening music: a repetition of it does retain an element of recapitulation, the dominant-tonic harmonies usually reserved for movement achieves cohesion largely through the end of works. After nearly three hundred several presentations of the opening theme, measures of relentless moto perpetuo flair in akin to a significantly modified theme-and- which the eighth-note pulse rarely subsides, variations form. The opening pastoral melody the opening gesture reappears, this time in its in the first violin is restated in several varied rightful place. forms and passes through several keys; by the Allegro coda that closes the movement, the “variations” are reduced to little more than repetition and development of the first seven notes of the theme in a web of imitative counterpoint among all the instruments.

When Haydn composed the quartets of Opus 76 (1796-97), his last full set of six, his popularity was growing exponentially. It is no wonder, then, that the Hungarian Count Joseph Erdödy included an exclusivity clause in his commission of the opus, forbidding the work from being published until several years after its première.

The Largo that follows dominates historical discussion of the quartet, not so much by virtue of its understated beauty or its sheer length (it

ludwig van beethoven Quartet in F minor, Op. 95, “Serioso” The oft-told historical backdrop of Opus 95 goes something like this: Beethoven’s friends had left him alone in Vienna. His presumed marriage proposal had been rejected. During the French army’s recent invasion, he’d had to borrow his brother’s pillows in order to protect his ears from the blasts. He could not concentrate on composing. Life was grim.

And one needs only to hear the opening measures of the “Serioso” quartet to see how its music helped popularize the biographical story: the brusque forte unison passage that runs up and down the F minor scale undoubtedly conjures up a tortured image of its creator. The immediately ensuing half-step modulation, though a ubiquitous tactic in contemporary pop music, has also been considered a sign of the composer wishing to break through compositional—and perhaps personal—barriers. The coda of the Allegro con brio further suggests fury through frustration, as the first five notes of the opening motive repeat obsessively. While Beethoven no doubt used this technique of saturation in previous works—most famously with the opening motive of Symphony No. 5 —the driving stepwise repetition here creates an as-yet unparalleled aura of angst.

The tension subsides somewhat with the opening of the Allegretto: a solo ’cello line that sounds like accompaniment without melody or harmony. The texture is reminiscent of the beginning of a fugue, and though none develops at this point, Beethoven does soon include two fugues characterized by anxious chromaticism.

The element of obsession returns in the following movement, this time in a rhythm: an eighthnote followed by a sixteenth-rest, followed by a sixteenth-note. This rhythmic motive takes us through several remote keys, including G-flat, D, B, and C, before returning to the tonic F

minor. It is Beethoven’s designation Serioso (a non-existent word in Italian) above this movement that gives this quartet its nickname and gives us further evidence of the work's gravity.

After the finale presents an introductory Larghetto and a rather standard rondo, the quartet closes with a decidedly un-serioso gesture: fast-paced, light music in F major that seems to end almost before it has begun. One must wonder if Beethoven was poking fun at his own anguish here. Or perhaps he was taunting the future generations of musicologists and music-lovers who would so readily want to equate this composition with his personal fury.

belá bartók Quartet No. 6, Sz. 114 Mesto, most often translated as “sad” or “mournful,” is one of the rarer mood designations in chamber music. Of course, its inclusion here is not the first: we see it in the above Haydn Largo, in a number of Beethoven works, and even in Bartok’s own Opus 1 Rhapsody. The mesto music in the sixth quartet is unique, however, in that it essentially takes over the work, akin to the way a disease takes over a body.

As the piece commences, the viola introduces the mesto theme, a chromatic line whose dynamics change with its register: it begins in the middle register at a medium volume, works its way to the upper register at forte, and finally bottoms out at pianissimo. The opening movement continues with a four-part unison that characterizes the intensity of the remainder of the movement.

The short themes introduced in the following Vivace are subject to the fragmentation and inversion so typical of Bartók's style.

serving as an introduction. As the work ends, the first notes of the theme are restated by the original instrument (viola), with the original starting pitch (G-sharp). It is as if we are being reminded of the theme’s more humble beginnings.

It is understood that Bartók originally intended the last movement to be a lively dance but realized that such a finale would seem incongruous with the emotion of the rest of the piece.

Historians have also noted that Bartók's mother In the second movement, the mesto theme is had become mortally ill before he composed transferred to the ’cello and is accompanied by the last movement, and that it may be seen as a single tremolo line stated by the other three an elegy for her. Whether the driving factors instruments. A brief Violin II solo tacked on to are personal or musical, it is hard to imagine this is the first sign of the theme’s expansion. the work ending otherwise.

Both the following Marcia and the Burletta of the third movement are humorous in a sense more sardonic than pleasurable. In the former, the incessant dotted eighth-sixteenth rhythm, layered trills, and pizzicato strumming paint a picture of rigidity gone wild; likewise, in the latter, fortissimo semi-tone grace-notes and quarter-tone dissonances portray madness, not levity.

The Burletta is preceded, of course, by a third installment of the “mournful” theme. Here it appears in greatly lengthened form, stated by the first violin and accompanied now by two independent voices. In the finale, the mesto expands to the entire movement, no longer simply

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October 22 brian harlow, organ Woolsey Hall, 8 pm Doctor of Musical Arts Recital Bach: Toccata in C major, BWV 564; Wammes: Mytò; Howells: De profundis clamavi ad te, Domine; Hancock: Toccata; Widor: Symphonie Romane.

October 23 yale philharmonia Woolsey Hall, 8 pm Shinik Hahm, conductor. Brahms: Academic Festival Overture and Variations on a theme of Haydn; Mahler: Symphony No. 4.

October 24 two bach cantatas St. Mary's Church, 5 Hillhouse Avenue, 8 pm Maasaki Suzuki, conductor. J.S. Bach: Cantatas BWV 78 and 80, and Jesu meine Freude. With the Yale Collegium Players, Robert Mealy, director.

October 30 & 31 fall opera scenes Morse Recital Hall, 7:30 pm Tickets $8-$12 / Students $5 Friday features scenes from Le Nozze di Figaro, Hamlet, and Rusalka. Saturday presents scenes from Don Pasquale, Lucia di Lammermoor, L’Italiana in Algeri, The Rake’s Progress, and Manon.