Musically Speaking

BCMS Season 27 concludes with performances of three works that have not been heard before on our series: Haydn’s so-called “Quinten” or ‘Fifths’ String Quartet, Duo for Violin and Viola by Heitor Villa-Lobos and Concerto for Violin, Piano and String Quartet of Ernest Chausson.

The presence of the Haydn allows us finally to invoke the name of the “father of chamber music” during a season that began by quietly acknowledging the 200th anniversary of his passing and it’s coincidence with the birth of Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy. With the Villa-Lobos Duo we observe the fiftieth anniversary of his death, showcase his rarely heard masterpiece for violin and viola, and the collaboration of our two newest member artists, Harumi Rhodes and Roger Tapping. The Chausson Concerto, rarely heard in any chamber music series, literally raises the game by combining sonata team and string quartet, used like the solo vs. concertante or ripieno textures of an earlier era, into one glorious tonal orgy.

The Haydn “Quinten” is named to describe the intervals of the opening theme (i.e., spacings between pitches) of the first movement that spell two consecutive descending fifths, to the Tonic and to the Dominant, A-D, E-A. The fifth occurs naturally in the harmonic series (ascending between the first and second overtones), and has formed the basis (bassus) for harmonic movement, structure, and cadences (i.e., rest points) in Western music for more than three-hundred years. Haydn places this open, ‘perfect’ interval out in the open, on or near the surface, where he repeatedly explores its expressive melodic interest:

Clip: Haydn Quartet in d, Hob.III:76, Movement 1, opening

For those who read our first blog last October, you might recall that we referenced the Minuet and Trio movement and it’s unison canon at the octave as the source of inspiration for the Trio section of the third movement of Brahms’ A major Piano Quartet. Both pieces are known for this double-struggle between unison octave pairings; a rarity in chamber music writing.

Clip: Haydn Quartet in d, Hob.III:76, Movement 3, opening

Clip: Brahms Piano Quartet in A, Op. 26, Movement 3, trio

In the last movement the character of the exposed fifth can range from questioning to humorous:

Clip: Haydn Quartet in d, Hob.III:76, Movement 4, opening

My first encounters with each of the next two pieces are vividly etched in memory. The Villa-Lobos was performed at one of the daily Mezzogiorno chamber concerts at the Festival dei due Mondi in Spoleto, Italy in 1974!  The stellar performers were Ani Kavafian and Walter Trampler.

Born in Rio de Janeiro in 1888, Villa-Lobos is the perfect composer for spanning the music of two worlds. Still regarded as Latin America’s most influential composer, his early musical experience is informed by Brazilian folk and ethnic traditions, improvisation with local street bands, and a stint as cellist in an opera orchestra. His earliest European influences include music of the Ballets Russes, Debussy, Satie, Stravinsky, and Milhaud, with whom he exchanged music of his native country. He is best known to audiences for his series of nine pieces for various chamber, vocal and orchestral combinations entitled Bachianas Brasileiras. The Duo for Violin and Viola dates from 1946, two years after the series, and shows a range of influences from the imitative virtuosity and classic rhythms of the Mozart Duos for Violin and Viola, to the impressionistic and sonorous language of Debussy.

Clip: Villa-Lobos Duo, Movement 1, opening

Clip: Villa-Lobos Duo, Movement 2, opening

Clip: Villa-Lobos Duo, Movement 2, ending

Clip: Villa-Lobos Duo, Movement 3, opening

My first performances of the Chausson Concerto for violin, piano and string quartet were sometime in the 1970s at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center with the violinist Zino Francescatti (one of my idols), pianist Gaby Casadesus, and a quartet that included violinists Ani and Ida Kavafian and cellist Paul Tobias. The experience of playing with those two legendary soloists was nothing short of being carried aloft in a whirlwind!

The work was written for and dedicated to Eugène Ysaÿe, the great Belgian violinist (and teacher of violinist Josef Gingold and violist William Primrose) for whom he also wrote his famous Poème six years later.

The Concerto opens with three statements of a three-note motif, each with a different scoring. The third statement leads into an extended chorale. At letter ‘A’ the three notes are restated on the Dominant, or fifth degree of the D major scale with a chromatic alteration, i.e., B-flat instead of B natural, adding a new harmonic dimension to the motif. When the violin and piano soloists finally reach the Animé we realize that all we have heard thus far is introductory to one of the most exhilarating works of the entire literature.

Clip: Chausson Concerto, Movement 1, opening

What unites these works in this program on another level is that they each begin with or make extensive use of the same three notes and intervals. Those among us from the Sesame Street generation might say that the entire concert is brought to you by the letters A, D, and E (or E flat). The Haydn A-D, E-A; the Villa-Lobos – note the opening accompaniment A, D, E flat, and end of the second movement; and of course the Chausson D, A, E (and its transposition A, E, B flat!). Composers are known to spell out their names or ideas in the notes they select (BACH, DSCH, etc.) and performers, too!

We are enjoying our new beginning for BCMS and are grateful for your continued appreciation and support. Enjoy the concert and the summer. We’ll see you again at the Summer Series and in the fall.

Julius Röntgen (1855-1932) is the unfamiliar name in the middle of our April program. Until a few years ago his name and music were completely unknown to me. My first encounter was while seated in the balcony at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam awaiting the start of what was to be a really splendid concert performed by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. The Concertgebouw is not as large as Symphony Hall, but no less ideal, stately, or grand, especially with its magnificent unpainted wooden organ case and permanent choral seating towering above the stage amid flowing steps. From my seat I could take in the full volume of the hall and read the names of great composers inscribed on a frieze around the balcony. There were the usual suspects and the one name that seemed very out of place: Röntgen. When I asked my local colleagues who he was, they brightened with pride in claiming him as a Dutchman. When I heard his music, and found out more about him, it was easy to hear why.

In his Brahms Biography, Jan Swafford mentions Röntgen among those younger composers for whose work Brahms showed greatest enthusiasm. (The others were Knorr, Fuchs, Novak and Dvorak.) One of my Dutch colleagues, Francien Schatborn, principal violist of the Hilversum Radio Orchestra, made a point of telling me that she was planning to record a number of his viola works. After an exhaustive computer search of the archives in The Hague I ended up purchasing just about every piece of Röntgen chamber music that included viola. I was amazed by the amount of music he wrote for familiar combinations: three viola sonatas with piano, a trio for clarinet, viola and piano, a terzetto with flute and violin, and more than a dozen string trios. Not included in the catalog, nor in the original purchase, were the true gems that appeared a couple of years later on Francien’s inspiring premiere recording, Lyrische Gänge or Lyric Journeys (1926), five songs for the same forces as Brahms’ Op. 91, Gestillte Sehnsucht and Geistliches Wiegenlied (1884), the two songs for mezzo, viola and piano. They were re-discovered only as recently as 2004.

Set to texts by Friedrich Theodor Vischer (1807-1887) which reflect upon early life and the final journey (outside and inward) toward that final rest, these songs explore the same emotional territory as Mahlers’ Das Lied von der Erde (1907) and much later by Vier letzte Lieder of Richard Strauss (1948). Their harmonic language is closer to Schumann and early Brahms, while in structure they share with the Mahler–a concluding song in which the material is extended to the point of seeming endless.

The first two songs, entitled Der Schlaf, (Sleep), and Stille (Silence) bring easily to mind the quiet-producing sleep of Brahms’ chosen texts, and of Strauss’ Beim Schlafengehen.

Clip: Der Schlaf

Clip: Stille

Mozart (1756-1791) and Mendelssohn (1809-1847) had more in common than personal encounters early in life with Goethe (1749-1832). Mendelssohn followed Mozart’s invention of the viola quintet (he wrote six) with two of his own. Mendelssohn’s second and last, in B-flat major, is in the same key as Mozart’s first and makes extensive use of a ‘horn-call’ motif (an ascending triad with a dotted rhythm), that Mozart uses even in his E-flat piano quartet, and in just the same way – to punctuate and thereby distinguish phrases.

Clip: Mozart Piano Quartet in E-flat, K. 493, Movement 1

Clip: Mendelssohn String Quintet in B-flat, Op. 87, Movement 1

Clip: Mendelssohn String Quintet in B-flat, Op. 87, Movement 4

Both the Mozart and the Mendelssohn end their works with movements that remind us they were significant instrumental prodigies as well as great composers.

Enjoy!

Chuck Aule (Ruffalo): “Is it Brahms?”
Ted Daniels (DiCaprio): “No, it’s Mahler.”
–from Martin Scorsese’s movie “Shutter Island”

It is Mahler’s early Piano Quartet, featured in BCMS’s March 28 concert at Sanders Theatre.

Further reading: a post by Richard Brody on The New Yorker blog.

BCMS pianists Mihae Lee and Randall Hodgkinson recently sat down with Andrew Watts, a BCMS intern and young composer currently enrolled at the New England Conservatory, to talk about Mozart’s Fantasia in F minor, K. 608 (originally written for Mechanical Clock!) and Beethoven’s own piano four hands arrangement of the Great Fugue. Both pieces are featured on BCMS’s upcoming February 2010 concert, Trios and Fugues. You can listen to audio clips from their conversation below.

Classical era fugues

Differences in approach

Piano four hands arrangements

Great Fugue example

Piano four hands technique

Duo partners

BCMS performed Schumann’s amusing Fairy Tale Tellings in WGBH’s Fraser Performance Studio in March 2009. The audio and video recordings of the performance are available through WGBH’s website.

BCMS pianist Mihae Lee and guests Jonathan Crow (violin) and William Purvis (French horn) brought Prokofiev’s Sonata for Solo Violin and Brahms’s Horn Trio to WGBH’s Fraser Studio in November 2009.

Johann Sebastian Bach typically composed works in groups – six Brandenburg Concertos, fifteen three-part Sinfonias, six Sonatas for violin and harpsichord, etc. He composed for the flute, although not in such tidy groupings; and he wrote exactly one piece for flute alone, the Partita.

Before 1717 all of Bach’s compositions involving the “flute” were actually composed for the recorder. It was only after he moved from Weimar to Cöthen that Bach began writing specifically for the transverse flute, or traverso. The very first piece he composed for the new-fangled traverso was the Partita.

The Partita presents a quandary to the flutist. In the first movement, the Allemande, Bach writes continuous sixteenth notes, as if writing for a string instrument. He provides no dynamic indications, no phrasing indications, no ornamentation, no editing, – just sixteenth notes and bar lines. Two hundred eighty eight sixteenth notes pass before the first pause for breath is provided.  How can we possibly perform the thing?

We must find enough freedom in our phrasing to allow time for breath. As in speech, phrases may be long or short, urgent or leisurely; some passages have a headlong trajectory, some tread water. As we play, we listen for the architecture and logic of Bach’s notes; having been chosen by him, there is genius in their arrangement. Phrases, sequences, and cadences become apparent, and in the welter of notes we seek places where we can catch breath with the least disruption to the music’s progress.

The three remaining movements of the Partita present no such quandaries. But the fact that Bach never again wrote a Partita for solo flute – let alone an Allemande – suggests that he realized that, in performance, it presents a real challenge.

Fenwick Smith

Well, this has been fun. We decided, since we could, to enjoy this as a long project. It’s a long and many faceted piece, and a miracle of imagination and ingenuity, so it deserves months of marinating. Not that it is new to all of us — our cellist, Natasha, spent years rehearsing, performing and recording it in the earlier part of her career in Oslo, Norway, and now she’s enjoying a return to it with the fresh eyes and ears of different colleagues. Meanwhile, Lucy, our violinist, has an encyclopedic knowledge of various recordings of it in all its known forms — for harpsichord, piano and string trio.

A little background here — what we are playing is a transcription  by the violinist, Dmitry Sitkovetsky, who made his version in memory of Glenn Gould (whose early and late recordings of the piece began and sealed his fame). So it’s a string trio which refers to a piano version of a piece for harpsichord. Layers within layers.

For us the question that comes up is how to balance our relationships with each of these ancestors. Bach made different versions of many of his own works so that, for example, there’s a fine concerto that one can listen to in his versions for either violin or harpsichord and be convinced that each is the original. There’s a level of imagination at work which goes beyond merely transcribing the notes from one instrument to the other — each version is fully idiomatic for the instrument. This was also Sitkovetsky’s  task, and it’s a mark of his success that his trio version has had a distinguished life of performance and recording since it was published in 1985, just after Gould’s early death.

So, underlying our discussions are the questions of how much to think about Sitkovetsky thinking about Gould. For some music lovers Gould’s two versions are like two books of a bible — the older, more bombastic and self-consciously idiosyncratic Gould seeming to chastise and correct his more naive younger self. In choosing particular string textures, is Sitkovetsky hearing the choices Gould made on the piano, and should we be taking Gould’s often extreme tempi into account when we choose our own?

Over the weeks it has become clear that our (perhaps unspoken) instinct is to find our way directly back to Bach’s own text, using Sitkovetsky’s very skillful transcription less as an interpretation and more as our vehicle, making our own decisions about articulations (mostly this means when to put in and take out slurs) based on our knowledge of the original harpsichord writing and our judgment about how best to realize it on string instruments. And if we see some subtle rewriting which we think sounds more elegant and more faithful we feel free to do so.

Lucy, Natasha and I have enjoyed playing string trios several times since Natasha and I moved to Boston in 2005, so we began the Bach with a sense of familiarity with each other as a trio. And yet, and this is from my viola perspective, it was immediately clear to me that it felt different from other string trios. What strikes me is that the viola part is only sometimes a viola part — it’s not conceived, like most viola parts, to provide a different, perhaps warmer contralto voice than the violin. Instead, it very often has to be heard as an equal and very similar voice to the violin as the two instruments go through Bach’s sequence of canons at every interval. So I find myself playing many passages on my top string in much higher positions than Lucy needs to be for the same notes. And so my challenge is to try to resemble the sound of a violinist easily running around in first and third positions on the E string, while I’m playing in 5th and higher positions on my larger instrument — are you feeling sorry for me? I was at first (feeling sorry for myself). For a few days I tried a fine 5-string viola and there was no doubt that the higher passages fell much more easily into the hand. But the instrument I borrowed hadn’t been conceived for classical use, and I missed the depth and body of my own instrument in the lower passages. And it was surprisingly confusing having to think about where my D string was. So I returned happily to my own viola and I’ve enjoyed getting a little fitter as I train in the higher altitudes.

One more note about our process — since so many of the variations are strict canons between the top two voices above wonderful running cello parts, Lucy and I have found a technique to make sure we are playing the voices as similarly as possible. We simply get Natasha to stop what she’s doing and listen to the two of us playing our parts simultaneously instead of at the interval of imitation Bach has written. This enables us to compare bowings, phrase shapes and articulations instantly, with Natasha’s ears guiding us from the middle. Since Bach goes through all the intervals of canon possible, this leads to some weird sounds as we play, seriously and musically, whole beautiful variations in parallel major seconds or 7ths. We can only hope nobody is eavesdropping on our rehearsals!

Roger Tapping

The second concert of our twenty-seventh season offers music that in at least three different ways brings the outside, or the outsider, in.

Chamber music began as one of the domestic, interior arts within the family, the church, or the court. The best known of the evening’s three works, Johannes Brahms’ Trio for Violin, Horn and Piano (1865), brings into the home the most evocative sound of the great outdoors, both hill and dale. Krystof Penderecki’s Sextet for String Trio, Clarinet, Horn and Piano (2000) assembles an even larger ‘broken consort’, i.e., instruments of different sound producing families, to create an ensemble that rides the tonal boundary between orchestral and chamber, between outer and inner. Piano Quartet No. 2 in F minor (1823) by fourteen-year old Felix Mendelssohn was one of several works written for a series of house concerts that showcased his prodigious talents and enabled this scion of a successful family with a few recent Protestant converts to assimilate into and cultivate an audience from the Prussian society.  

Goethe (1749-1832), the poet and philosopher whose life spanned those of Mozart and Mendelssohn, knew personally both Mozart and Mendelssohn when they first appeared as young prodigies. He was more impressed by Mendelssohn’s upbringing and talents. The grandson of a philosopher and son of a banker whose grandmother gave him a manuscript of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion (at an age when most kids today are denied the keys to the family car) proved in time to be as talented a visual artist and conductor as he was composer and performer on the violin and piano.  And yet, many later commentators have suggested that Mendelssohn’s music lacks the ability to evoke the struggle, irony and ambiguity of the human condition that many listeners find in Mozart’s music.

Mendelssohn may well have anticipated the need for shadow in his music by selecting the infrequently used key of F minor for the second of his three piano quartets and a sonata for violin and piano that followed. So rare is this key choice that each of three earlier works that readily come to mind have subtitles or programs connoting tragedy. (Beethoven Piano Sonata “Appassionata,” String Quartet Op. 95 “Serioso,” Overture to Egmont.) Later in life Mendelssohn’s last string quartet, Op. 80, also in F minor, introduces an ominous tone unheard in any of the earlier five.

The upbeat tempo and gestures of the first and last movements of Piano Quartet No. 2 suggest a real effort to bring light and grace to the subject. But the choice of key tells a different story.

Clip: Mendelssohn Piano Quartet in F minor, Movement 1, opening

Clip: Mendelssohn Piano Quartet in F minor, Movement 4, opening

There are at least two instances in which Mendelssohn clearly had the dramatic and sober moments of earlier works in mind. The first from Beethoven’s “Apassionata” Sonata is echoed in a piano riff, and the second from the close of the slow movement of Schubert’s “Trout” Quintet.

Clip: Beethoven “Apassionata” Sonata, Movement 1, opening

Clip: Beethoven ”Apassionate” Sonata, Movement 3, opening

Clip: Mendelssohn Piano Quartet in F minor, Movement 4

 Clip: Schubert “Trout” Quintet, Movement 2, Measure 95 to end.

Clip: Mendelssohn Piano Quartet in F minor, Movement 2, ending

In his book ‘The Romantic Generation,’ the ever-enlightening Charles Rosen says:

“Schubert’s and Beethoven’s horn calls give us an exceptional example of nineteenth-century musical iconography as opposed to simple tone painting of bells, babbling streams, and cuckoos… its bare fifths softly played seem to come from far away, and the sense of distance stands as a natural metaphor for absence. How much of its effect is due to its individual sonority and how much to its associations with the poetry of the time we can only speculate (and its frequent appearance in verse must have been due to the sonority of the hunting horns as well as the experience of hearing them in the forest). In Romantic music these horn calls come from landscape; they appear in Schubert and Beethoven with a novel aura of the sublime and the melancholy derived from the new ambitions of landscape painters and poets. In the extraordinary triumph of landscape, we can see both painter and poet using elements of Nature –foliage, rocks, mountains, and above all the unifying poser of light –the way a musician uses harmonies and motifs.”

Brahms learned the horn from his father and was proficient on the violin in addition to being a master pianist.  For this first-of-a-kind use of horn with more familiar chamber instruments Brahms specified the use of the natural, valve-less horn rather that the increasingly popular valve horn in part because its natural outdoor qualities were more easily tamed and muted by placing the right hand inside the bell.  The occasional muting serves both practical and creative purposes by maintaining a proper balance among the three dissimilar instruments, creating the sound of distance and absence, and along with the dark key of E-flat minor providing a veil for the Adagio mesto (mournful Adagio) through which Brahms is said to have memorialized his recently departed mother.

Clip: Brahms Horn Trio, Movement 3, opening

When this part of the opening material appears again later it is followed by several barely perceptible changes that lead an unsuspecting listener from mourning to morning without really knowing how. By slipping seamlessly from (E-flat) minor to (G-flat) major, and quoting in major the outline of a familiar German folksong normally heard in minor, we are somehow prepared for the Finale without really knowing why.

Clip: Brahms Horn Trio, Movement 3, Measures 53 to 66

Clip: Dort in den Weiden steht ein Haus 
(There in the willows a house stands)

 Clip: Brahms Horn Trio in E-flat, Movement 4, opening

The Finale reminds us that the hunting horn is heard in the morning, at the start of a new day.

Since its premiere in 2000 Krystof Penderecki’s Sextet in two movements has been hailed as one of the most compelling chamber works of our time.  Although its language and materials are far from the common practices of the Romantic era (by which it is surrounded on this program) the musical iconography of earlier times, representing outdoor sounds with winds, remains. The piece opens with a palpable thumping heart-beat in the piano joined by the stopped horn on a low pedal note interrupted by a shrill bird call in the clarinet and imitated by the violin.

Clip: Penderecki Sextet, Movement 1, opening

Twenty minutes later, as the piece draws to a close and after various virtuosic ascents and descents, collaborations and clashes, the players are instructed to play funebre, signifying loss and the end of an experience.

Clip: Penderecki Sextet, Movement 2, ending

Given what we know about how the horn has been used by Brahms and others, we should not be surprised when we encounter a marking in the score that says da lontano (from far away), by which Penderecki instructs the horn player to leave the stage and play from the wings. He is similarly instructed to re-join the ensemble and return to his seat (and play as if far away) before the conclusion of the piece.

While each of these pieces trades in momentary sadness and loss, of identity or of a loved one, each also contains the promise of reconciliation, reconnection, transformation, and  better things to follow.

Enjoy the concert!

Marcus

Our first concert of the new BCMS season begins where chamber music itself began, with music written for private enjoyment by the smallest number of players of different instruments from the same family. More than any other ensemble the string trio, as created and perfected by Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert, places the viola in an equal space between the violin and cello. Mozart’s seminal Trio Divertimento in E-flat, performed last December by BCMS, and Beethoven’s admiring response (coming up next January 16) spring from the same source of all the music heard in this opening concert: the imagination and artistry of Franz Joseph Haydn. Haydn is literally the father of our country. His dates are the same as George Washington’s (1732-1809). This year we acknowledge the 200th year since his passing.  

Clip: Mozart Divertimento in E-flat, K.563, Movement 1, opening

Clip: Beethoven Trio in E-flat, Op. 3, Movement 1, opening

Clip: Schubert Trio in B-flat, D. 581, Movement 1, opening 

 

Clip: Schubert Trio in B-flat, D. 581, Movement 2, measure 18

 

If that cello phrase seems familiar, it may be because we are used to hearing it in a completely different register and at one of the most sublime moments in all of Music.

 

Clip: Mozart Magic Flute

Clip: Brahms Quartet in A, Op. 26, Movement 1, opening

 

Clip: Brahms Quartet in A, Op. 26, Movement 2, opening

Clip: Brahms Quartet in A, Op. 26, Movement 2, without mute

 

Clip: Brahms Quartet in A, Op. 26, Movement 3, opening

 

One of the most thrilling contests between the two sonorities takes place in the Trio. The piano part leaps into a melody in a dramatic series of octaves we might expect to hear in a concerto. These are followed closely in canon by all the strings.

Clip: Brahms Quartet in A, Op. 26, Movement 3, trio

 

Clip: Haydn Quartet in d, Hob.III:76, Movement 3, opening 

Clip: Schubert Rondo brillant in b, D.895

 

Clip: Brahms Quaret in A, Op. 26, Movement 4