Endellion String Quartet, October 24, 2017

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

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Robert Blocker, Dean