Robert Blocker, Dean
oneppo chamber music series
Endellion String Quartet
David Shifrin, Artistic Director Tuesday, October 24, 2017 • 7:30 pm Morse Recital Hall
Oneppo Chamber Music Series
Endellion String Quartet andrew watkinson, violin • ralph de souza, violin garfield jackson, viola • david waterman, cello
Joseph Haydn 1732–1809
String Quartet in G major, Op. 54, No. 1 I. Allegro con brio II. Allegretto III. Minuet — Trio IV. Finale. Presto
Béla Bartók 1881–1945
String Quartet No. 6, Sz. 114 I. Mesto — Piu mosso, pesante — Vivace II. Mesto — Marcia III. Mesto — Burletta IV. Mesto intermission
Ludwig van Beethoven 1770–1827
String Quartet No. 12 in E-flat major, Op. 127 I. Maestoso – Allegro II. Adagio, ma non troppo e molto cantabile – Andante con moto III. Scherzando vivace IV. Finale. Allegro
As a courtesy to the performers and audience, silence electronic devices. Please do not leave the hall during selections. Photography or recording of any kind is prohibited.
Artist Profile
Endellion String Quartet
The quartet’s international schedule has included tours of North and South America and concerts in Australasia, the Far East, Middle East, South Africa, and Western Europe. Everywhere, the Endellion String Quartet “sets the audience ablaze” (Daily Telegraph) and “captivates concertgoers with a remarkable rapport, playing to each other with a sense almost of discovery, communicating to the audience on a level of unusual intimacy” (The Guardian).
The Endellion is renowned as one of the finest quartets in the world. Three of its original founding members continue to play in the quartet, which began in January 1979. Ralph de Souza joined the group thirty-one years ago, in 1986. As Gramophone states, “There’s always a feeling when listening to the Endellion Quartet that you’re listening to the Urtext method of quartet playing. Maybe 35 years of playing together has brought to them as a After the Endellions performed a Beethoven group a uniformity of thought and instinct cycle at New York’s Metropolitan Museum that allows them to play as a single entity.” of Art, Strad Magazine marvelled over “the trust and risk-taking that comes from In Britain, the Endellion String Quartet has years of playing together... [it] was a true appeared at nearly all of the major series delight.” Other recent and future highlights and festivals and has broadcast many include appearances at Carnegie Hall in times on BBC radio and television. It has New York, Queen Elizabeth Hall in appeared at the Proms and been featured London, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, in the week-long Radio 3 programmes Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern, Ittingen Artist of the Week and Artists in Focus. Its Festival, Montreal’s Pollack Hall, a tour presence in London has been marked for of Mexico including a performance at the many years by an annual series at Wigmore Festival Internacional Cervantino, a fortHall, and also by appearances at the Queen night of concerts and teaching in China Elizabeth Hall where the quartet’s memand Taiwan, and the Endellion’s first bers were artistic directors of several concert in Tchaikovsky Hall, Moscow. “Quartet Plus” series. The Endellion also They also recently played in Ankara and continues its prestigious residency at Istanbul for the first time. Cambridge University, which began in 1991, gives a regular spring series at The Venue The quartet has also undertaken three Leeds, and recently began a new series at short-term residencies at the Massachusetts Balliol College, Oxford. It has worked with Institute of Technology (MIT) in the guest artists including members of the United States, and coached for MISQA in former Amadeus Quartet, Sir Thomas Allen, Montreal. From 2001 to 2010 the group Joshua Bell, Michael Collins, Benjamin was the associate quartet of the RNCM; Grosvenor, Marc-André Hamelin, Stephen and 2011 saw the start of its continuing Hough, Steven Isserlis, Mitsuko Uchida, position as visiting quartet in association and Tabea Zimmermann. with the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.
Artist Profile · notes on the program
Released by Warner Classics in its 30th year, the Endellion’s recordings of the complete Beethoven quartets and viola quintets (supported by The Stradivari Trust) include rarely heard works, movements, studies, and fragments for quartet and quintet, as well as Beethoven’s complete early version of Op. 18, No. 1 and his remarkable quartet arrangement of his Piano Sonata Op. 14, No. 1. The texts used in these recordings were prepared by notable Beethoven scholar and editor Jonathan Del Mar, in collaboration with the quartet. The Observer commented “… these superb musicians respond to the dark undertow so characteristic of Beethoven’s quartets as much as the gentle lyricism which invariably breaks through.” The Endellions have also recorded works by Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, Dvořák, Smetana, Tchaikovsky, Bartók, Walton, Amy Beach, Barber, Foulds, Martinů, Bridge, Britten, and Adès. Their Haydn recording for Warner was called “extraordinary” by the International Record Review and their Britten was described as “enormously moving” (BBC Music Magazine, 2014) and “quartet playing at the top level” (Luister). The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (2000) concludes that “The Endellion is arguably the finest quartet in Britain, playing with poise, true intonation, excellent balance and a beautiful tone.” The Endellions were winners of the Royal Philharmonic Society Award for Best Chamber Ensemble in 1996.
joseph haydn String Quartet in G major, Op. 54, No. 1 Franz Joseph Haydn earned the colloquial title “father of the string quartet” from not only his prolific contribution to the genre, nearly 70 in total, but also for his revolutionary place in music history. He was born as Baroque masters, Bach, Vivaldi, and Telemann were still in their primes and died as Beethoven was writing the first works in the Romantic tradition. Haydn wrote quartets in every chapter of his life; the works as a whole show an evolution as a composer and likewise the evolution of the string quartet as a genre. His earliest quartets, dating back to the 1750s, feature the first violin while subjugating the cello to continuo-like accompaniment as the viola simply fleshes out the harmonies. By the 1780s, Haydn began to explore the possibilities of writing for four unique string voices in which all instruments share in conversation. His Op. 54 and Op. 55 quartets, written in 1787 and 1788, respectively, were composed for Hungarian violinist Johann Tost, court musician in the Esterházy orchestra, of which Haydn was music director. These collections of quartets, six in total, feature brilliant and showy first violin parts, sure to entice Tost into becoming an advocate for them through convincing and polished performances. Tost left the royal orchestra in 1788 to freelance in Paris and brought with him Haydn’s quartets in search of a publisher. They were published in Paris along with two of Haydn’s symphonies.
notes on the program
The first movement of Op. 54, No. 1 is exuberant and relentlessly proud. The first violin part is featured brilliantly, but the other voices offer concise but essential commentary. Even when accompanying, the viola and cello parts are intricate and demanding. Haydn saves his legendary wit for the last movement in which a seemingly mundane gesture, two eighth-note pickups, become nonsensically parroted amid a frenetic buzz of running 16th notes in all voices. —Julia Clancy béla bartók String Quartet No. 6, Sz. 114 At the age of 11, we are told, Bartók presented his first piano recital. On the program was an original composition, The Danube River, which traced the river’s path by using melodies representative of the countries through which it passed. Where the river enters Hungary, he wrote a happy polka, commenting, “It is jubilant, for it has come to Hungary;” when the river departs the country, the music turns suitably dolorous.
him as composing. Bartók spent years in the fields and hills not only of Hungary and Central Europe but even of Turkey and North Africa, collecting and recording folk music and studying it from an anthropological perspective. He became a pioneer in the fledgling field of ethnomusicology and, more important, he absorbed the essence of this wealth of music deep within. Folk music’s directness of expression, as well as its characteristic harmonies, melodies, and rhythmic patterns, became an organic and integral part of his music. Bartók was concerned throughout his compositional career with the medium of the string quartet. The six string quartets that he completed are in many ways the backbone of his entire oeuvre, and they are widely recognized as one of the 20th century’s most significant collective additions to the quartet repertoire.
The Sixth Quartet was composed during the autumn of 1939, while the composer’s mother was suffering from the illness that would soon take her life, and while the impending war was forcing Bartók to make plans to flee his beloved Hungary. It cerRarely is a composer so deeply and lovingly tainly reflects the anguish never far from intertwined with the culture of his native Bartók’s heart during those days. One land as is Béla Bartók with Hungary. While theme, marked “mesto” (mournful), serves still a student in Budapest, Bartók became to introduce each movement and bind the involved in the Hungarian nationalist piece together. This theme begins not only movement and the struggle to free the coun- the lively, playful first movment, but also, try from Austrian domination. While on in increasingly ornamented versions, the holiday in the remote Hungarian countryside, next two: a march in the rhythm of the he heard a peasant girl singing a haunting 18th century military recruiting dance, melody; with great difficulty, Bartók notated verbunkos, with a middle section parodying the folksong’s strange melody and irregular the clatter and pathos of a gypsy band; and rhythms. Thus began the fascination with a savage, sardonic Burletta with a wistful, the peasant songs of his homeland that nostalgic middle andantino section and a became a vocation nearly as important to pizzicato (plucked) recapitulation. The
notes on the program
sad mesto tune then expands to create the “teneramente” (tenderly) opens the faster whole of the slow finale, interrupted only by Allegro section of the sonata form. The a couple of distant reminiscences of the first first violin introduces another, more forceful movement. These now sound, as Anthony theme over gruff repeated notes in the Burton put it, “poignantly like memories of second violin and viola, leading to a second a past Hungary, debased by recent events group of themes that return to the cantabile and soon to be lost to Bartók forever.” (singing) character of the opening. The —Keith Murphy development begins with a return of the introductory material, louder and more intense. As the tempo accelerates, the music ludwig van beethoven builds to a powerful climax. The introString Quartet No. 12 in E-flat major, duction returns once more for a third time, Op. 127 now the loudest it has been. Beethoven returns to the faster tempo once more, In early 1824, Russian nobleman and leading to a sneaky recapitulation amateur cellist Prince Nikolai Galitzin followed by a coda and soft ending. wrote to Beethoven from St. Petersburg requesting that he “compose one, two, or Two themes of sublime tranquility are the three quartets, for which labor I will be basis for a set of five, free variations in glad to pay you what you think proper.” the Adagio. A typical Beethoven variation In response to the commission, Beethoven movement features embellishments and began working on his Op. 127 quartet in elaborations on the original theme, but May 1824, completing it in February 1825. with the basic melody, harmony, and The premiere was given in Vienna on March rhythm left intact. Not so here. In this, 6, 1825, by the Schuppanzigh Quartet, the first of Beethoven’s “late” quartets, he which had only two weeks to rehearse, expresses profound, exalted sentiments leading to an inevitably poor performance through complex transformations of the and reception. Beethoven, not deterred, two themes. Robert Schumann said of the invited a quartet led by Joseph Böhm to movement, “One seems to have lingered prepare the work under his guidance. Since not fifteen minutes, but an eternity.” he was completely deaf by this time, Beethoven coached the players by watching From the lofty spiritual plane of the Adagio, their bows and fingers. This quartet gave the Scherzando vivace returns the listener a highly successful performance on March to earth with a buoyant energy. After four 26, 1825, much to the delight of the chords of pizzicato (plucked) introduction, composer. the cello states a rhythmic main theme, which is developed and expanded to epic The stunning opening movement follows proportions. A virtuosic “trio” section has the basic structure of a straightforward the first violin whisper little melodic fragsonata allegro form, but with none of the ments over repeated note accompaniment. spirit. The movement’s short, slow intro- The opening section is then repeated literally. duction is broad, heavily accented, and thickly written. A lyrical melody marked
Notes on the Program
Strangely, Beethoven marked the last movement Finale, but without any indication of tempo. The musical content, though, seems to imply a bright, quick tempo. After a unison introductory phrase, the first violin sings the lighthearted opening theme. A second theme follows, characterized by strong repeated notes and heavy accents. After the development and return of the thematic material, Beethoven adds a coda which goes to an unexpected and striking new key, meter, and tempo, creating a tonal aura and rhythmic pattern completely new to the listener’s ears (though it is based on the movement’s opening). The quartet ends on a strongly positive note. —Jacob Adams
Oneppo Chamber Music Series • 2017–2018 Patrons
Becoming a Yale School of Music Patron is a wonderful way to support our performance programs. We offer benefits to our patrons that range from preferred seating to invitations to the School’s Academic Convocation. To find out more about becoming a Yale School of Music Patron, visit music.yale.edu/giving. You can also add a contribution to your ticket purchase to any Yale School of Music concert. concert office • 203 432-4158
charles ives circle $600 and above Victoria Keator DePalma Marc & Margaret Mann Ronald & Susan Netter
Dr. Leonard E. Munstermann Kathryn & Peter Patrikis Maryanne & W. Dean Rupp Nathan M. Silverstein Joan & Thomas Steitz
paul hindemith circle $250 – $599 Laura & Victor Altshul Henry & Joan Binder Mr. & Mrs. Douglas J. Crowley Mr. & Mrs. Steven M. Feinstein Attys. Barbara & Ivan Katz Barbara & William Nordhaus Ray Fair & Sharon Oster Patty & Tom Pollard Josephine Shepard Lorraine D. Siggins Abby N. Wells
samuel simons sanford circle $50 – $124 Anonymous (2) Susan S. Addiss Irma & Bob Bachman Bill & Donna Batsford Nancy & Richard Beals Victor & Susan Bers Eric & Lou Ann Bohman Walter Cahn Ki & Juliet Chon Judith Colton & Wayne Meeks Sue & Gus Davis Ms. Kathryn Feidelson Madlyn & Richard Flavell Steven Fraade & Ellen Cohen Howard & Sylvia Garland Clara Genetos Dr. Lauretta E. Grau Elizabeth Haas Robert & Noël Heimer In Memory of Jon T. Hirschoff Jay & Marjorie Hirshfield Alan & Joan Kliger Judith & Karl-Otto Liebmann Ann Marlowe William E. Metcalf Paul & Noemi Pfeffer
horatio parker circle $125 – $249 Anonymous (2) Emily Aber & Robert Wechsler Nina Adams & Moreson Kaplan Donald & Susan Anderson David & Carolyn Belt Carole & Arthur Broadus Anne Reed Dean, in memory of Professor & Mrs. E.B. Reed Carolyn Gould Joseph & Constance LaPalombara Household Colin & Suki McLaren Mary Jane & Steve Pincus
Jules Prown Cis & Jim Serling Larry & Betsy Stern Alan & Betty Trachtenberg Priscilla Waters Norton Hannah & Herbert Winer Marcia & Richard Witten Werner & Elizabeth Wolf Dr. & Mrs. B. Zuckerman gustave j. stoeckel circle $25 – $49 Mr. Vic G. Dvorak Kalman L. Watsky & Deborah Fried Paul Guida & Pat LaCamera Mr. Ivan Mueller Dr. Henry Park & Dr. Patricia Peter Mary Ellen Porcelli Sophie Z. Powell Karen & Mel Selsky Peter & Wendy Wells As of October 20, 2017
Robert Blocker, Dean
JOIN US FOR THE 20 1 7–2018 SE ASO N More than 200 concerts every year, many of which are free and streamed live, online! PETE
R
O
U N
D JI
Come see and hear our distinguished faculty, gi�ed students and alumni, and acclaimed guest artists in extraordinary solo, chamber, vocal, and orchestral performances of repertoire ranging from early to new music.
AN
ONEPPO CHAMBER MUSIC SERIES Inspired performances by the Brentano and Takács string quartets, the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields Chamber Ensemble, and a new trio featuring Soovin Kim, Paul Watkins, and Gloria Chien HOROWITZ PIANO SERIES Recitals by YSM’s faculty pianists and renowned guest artists Angela Hewitt and Marc-André Hamelin BREN
TA
N O
ST RIN
YALE PHILHARMONIA Concerts led by principal conductor Peter Oundjian and guest conductors David Robertson, Ignat Solzhenitsyn, and Marin Alsop, and the world premiere of the International Bruckner Society’s new edition of the composer’s Eighth Symphony, re-edited by Paul Hawkshaw
G QU
ELLINGTON JAZZ SERIES A series launched with a historic convocation in 1972 that brings established and emerging jazz artists to Yale
AR T
YA L E
O
PE
R
NEW MUSIC NEW HAVEN Contemporary works by award-winning Yale faculty and students, and guest composers
ET
YALE OPERA Ascendant vocalists present fully staged performances at the Shubert Theater and Morse Recital Hall along with programs of opera scenes
A
YALE IN NEW YORK Dynamic collaborations between Yale’s remarkable faculty, students, and alumni in Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall FACULTY ARTIST SERIES Members of the School’s esteemed faculty perform solo and chamber music programs COLLECTION OF MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS Historically informed performances by early music specialists in an intimate setting Contemporary works by award-winning Yale faculty and students, and guest composers
music.yale.edu
Upcoming Events Sir Jonathan Mills october 24 Talks and Master Classes Sir Jonathan Mills, Trumbull Fellow, presents “Improvisation and Leadership,” the last of four public lectures on issues related to “Culture, Creativity, and Community” Evans Hall, Yale School of Management (165 Whitney Ave.), Room 4410 Tuesday | 5 pm free admission Lunchtime Chamber Music october 25 Yale School of Music Ensembles YSM students perform a midday chamber music program Morse Recital Hall | Wednesday | 12:30 pm free admission Preview Concert: The Late Romantics of Austria october 25 Yale in New York This year’s Yale in New York series features music from Schoenberg’s Society for Private Musical Performance. The Late Romantics of Austria includes a performance of the Society’s chamber arrangement of Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony and songs by Mahler, with violinist Ani Kavafian, hornist William Purvis, and pianist Wei-Yi Yang Morse Recital Hall | Wednesday | 4:30 pm free admission
Suzana Bartal, piano october 26 Doctor of Musical Arts Recital Pianist Suzana Bartal presents a DMA recital Morse Recital Hall | Thursday | 7:30 pm free admission Peter Oundjian, principal conductor october 27 Yale Philharmonia Principal Conductor Peter Oundjian leads the Yale Philharmonia in the world premiere of the International Bruckner Society’s new edition of the composer’s Eighth Symphony on a program that also includes YSM faculty composer Martin Bresnick’s concerto for two marimbas, Grace Woolsey Hall | Friday | 7:30 pm Tickets start at $1 Yale Faculty/Staff $8 • Students $5 $3 surcharge for purchases at the door Fall Opera Scenes november 3&4 Yale Opera The Yale Opera presents a variety of scenes from operas by Mozart, Heggie, Massenet, Puccini, Strauss, Humperdinck, and Donizetti Morse Recital Hall | Friday & Saturday | 7:30 pm Tickets start at $10, Students $5
concert programs & box office Krista Johnson, Kate Gonzales, Michael Zuber-Zander communications Katie Kelley, David Brensilver operations Tara Deming, Chris Melillo piano curators Barbara Renner, Robert Crowson, Brian Daley, William Harold media production Matthew LeFevre, Travis Wurges
wshu 91.1 fm is the media sponsor of the Oneppo Chamber Music Series at the Yale School of Music connect with us
facebook.com/yalemusic
P.O. Box 208246, New Haven, CT · 203 432-4158
@yalemusic on Twitter music.yale.edu
If you do not intend to save your program, please recycle it in the baskets at the exit doors. Robert Blocker, Dean