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The Savannah Concert Association presents Mendelsson String Quartet Miriam Fried, violin The Mendelssohn String Quartet has established a reputation as one of the most imaginative, vital and exciting quartets of its generation. The Quartet tours annually throughout North America with regular trips to foreign destinations. The Mendelssohn Quartet was for nine years the Blodgett Artists in Residence at Harvard University, and has performed at such distinguished venues as Carnegie Hall in New York City, Washington DC's Kennedy Center and Library of Congress, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Wigmore Hall in London, and the Tonhalle in Zurich. The resident quartet of the Eastern Shore Chamber Music Festival and formerly resident quartet of the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, the Mendelssohn Quartet has performed at the Caramoor Festival, the Festival Pablo Casals in Prades, France, and makes frequent appearances at New York's Mostly Mozart Festival as well as the Ravinia, Aspen, and Saratoga Music Festivals. They were the first American ensemble invited to appear at the International Dialogues Festival in Kiev, Ukraine. The Quartet is often heard across the United States on Minnesota Public Radio's Saint Paul Sunday. PROGRAM Quartet in D Major, Op. 20, No. 4 — Haydn Quartet in F Major, Op. 135 — Beethoven — INTERMISSION — Quartet in F Minor, Op. 80 — Mendelssohn AUDIO EXCERPTS Full-length MP3 downloads and Real Media excerpts of their music is available here. PROGRAM NOTES In the summer of 2005 the quartet returned to the Ravinia Festival, and in 05-06 their performances include a return to the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society with guest artists Kim Kashkashian and Timothy Eddy in a program of twentieth century masterworks entitled "A Little Night Music." They will also return to Carnegie's Weill Recital Hall for a special all-Mozart program with pianist Robert Levin, and New York's Metropolitan Museum for a performance with pianist Jonathan Biss. The upcoming season also includes performances with baritone Sanford Sylvan, as well as appearances in Pittsburgh, Houston, Connecticut, Rochester, California, Alabama and Oregon. String Quartet in D Major, Opus 20, No.4 While the string quartet is widely acknowledged to have had Haydn as the "father", we shouldn't assume that works in the genre emerged, somehow, fully formed. Haydn built on examples set by composers of divertimenti and other popular forms, and his Opus 1 Quartets clearly show stylistic affinities to these proto-quartets, these precursors of the quartet as we know it today. For Haydn, the big leap came in 1772. His patron, Nicholas Esterhazy, required Haydn to run an ambitious musical establishment as well as compose a steady stream of new works. In 1772, for example, he was preoccupied with the production of symphonies (including the "Farewell"), and baryton trios (for the favorite instrument, now obsolete, of his patron). He also composed the six quartets of Opus 20. These are the best seen, perhaps as transitional works, certainly not as primitive as the Opus 1s or Opus 9s or Opus 17s, but also not as fully formed as the quartets in Opus 33 and beyond. Unlike subsequent sets of Haydn quartets, the six Opus 20s do not consistently share the same order of movements, or the same sort of finales, or the same designation for the lowest voice in the instrumental ensemble. If they are transitional however, they are also the first undisputed examples of the Viennese classical style at its full maturity. Sir Donald Tovey, the eminent English critic and musicologist, tells us, "With Opus 20 the historical development of Haydn's quartets reached its goal, and further progress is not progress in any historical sense, but simply the difference between one masterpiece and the next. Not all the later works are equally valuable; inequalities of value are relatively more rather than less noticeable, and no later set of six quartets, not even Opus 76, is, on its own plane, so uniformly weighty and so varied in substance as Opus 20." Of the Opus 20s, Number 4 is probably the most popular, and its virtue is abundantly clear. Spend time with the score and you ‘ll discover the wonderful ways in which symphonic procedures are integrated with the string quartet's special characteristics. Immediately noticeable is the idiosyncratic opening of the first movement which presents seven completely independent six-measure phrases. Also notice, in the third movement, the ongoing tug-of-war between accent and meter, and the use of Gypsy coloration, which is also found in the finale. Quartet in F Major, Opus 135 Beethoven's Op. 135, dedicated to Johann Wolfmayer, is his last quartet, completed on October, 1826, while his nephew was recovering from a suicide attempt. It is as distant in spirit from Mozart's light-hearted entertainment as can be imagined, yet intimate to the point of reticence. The tightly controlled sonata-form first movement is built of short motifs uttered as if it were in dialogue; from this conversation emerges melody. The energetic Scherzo begins innocently enough, but intrusive elements disturb our expectations and the movement turns out to be bizarre; its trio, for example, is far longer than normal and modulates successively to F, G, and A, a strange progression. Once the key of A is reached, a five-note rhythmic figure is reiterated 51 times while the first violin engages in a crazy dance. Returning to F Major, the coda consists only of syncopated chords. The slow movement in D-flat, a tranquil set of variations on a simple ten-bar theme imposed over an ABA form, is highly concentrated and at times dense with contrapuntal and chromatic elaboration; the melody disappears altogether in the fourth variation, which is grounded on the harmony of the theme. The work concludes with an enigmatic Finale that Beethoven entitled Der schwer gefasste Entschluess (The difficult resolution). The question Muss es sein? (Must it be?) is written over a disjunct threenote motif in the grave introduction; the lower parts repeat the agonized question five times with increasing urgency before the subsequent Allegro provides an affirmative reply: Es muss sein (It must be!) is inscribed over a melodic inversion of the former motif. What Beethoven meant by these inscriptions remains a mystery; he died five months after the quartet was completed. String Quartet in F minor, Opus 80 Just as Beethoven's increasing deafness helped him shape his F Major Quartet, so the death of Mendelssohn's beloved sister, Fanny, in May 1847, helped to determine the spirit of his F minor Quartet. On hearing the news of his sister's passing, Mendelssohn collapsed; he was not even able to attend the funeral. Subsequently he went to Switzerland to recover and while there, despite difficulties he encountered in getting back to work, finally completed the quartet in September of that year. Sad to say, he died just two months later, at age 38. The quartet opens with a passage of great agitation that reaches a climax with a bold, forceful motto that hurtles down through the quartet. The excited passage returns, but this time the composer presents the same motto as a warm cantabile theme. Alternating sections of passion and turmoil with stretches of lyrical beauty, Mendelssohn builds to the climactic, forceful final pages of the movement. Unlike most Mendelssohn's scherzos, which are light and elfin in character, the Allegro assai (a scherzo even though not so marked) is savage and sardonic in mien. The first part is a bizarre dance with hammered syncopations and harsh dissonances. The brief middle section has the viola and cello playing an unmodulated ostinato line over which the violins play a macabre waltzlike melody. The movement ends with a repeat of the opening. Most listeners identify the Adagio as an elegy for Fanny Mendelssohn. This deeply-felt movement has an arch shape - starting quietly, building to a puissant climax near the middle, and then again becoming quiet and fading away at the end. Feelings of restlessness and anxiety pervade the last movement. The
opening pattern of rapid back-and-forth notes of the cello part runs
throughout and contributes considerably to the restive atmosphere. As
with the opening movement, the finale builds to an extended, climactic
conclusion.
Tickets $35, $25, $12.50 Music teachers and students may order special tickets @$2 by emailing name & address to dianelboyd@comcast.net For a free brochure of the 2008-2009 season, email name & address to eoliver524@comcast.net |
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In the 2004-05 season the Mendelssohn String Quartet performed at Dartmouth College with actress Rosemary Harris in a concert of Beethoven, Shakespeare, and Huxley. Other performances included U.S. cities including Washington, DC, Boston, Buffalo, Syracuse, San Antonio, and the Caramoor Festival. The quartet also performed with violist Robert Mann, pianist Jonathan Biss, and clarinetist Alexander Fiterstein. 
